


Big Sky

by graceling_in_a_suit



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: (but no actual porn lol sorry), Alternate Universe - Space, But In Space, Cat/Human Hybrids, Crash Landings, Falling In Love, Father issues, Hybrid Louis, Identity Porn, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mentions of Slavery, Mercenaries, Niall is Bones McCoy in this fic and I make no apologies, Rebel Captain Harry, Rebellion, Smoking, Space Cowboys - Freeform, blatant stealing from star wars AND star trek AND firefly, kinda a space opera, no gods no kings, prison break - Freeform, starships, taking shrooms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-01-21 07:11:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21295565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graceling_in_a_suit/pseuds/graceling_in_a_suit
Summary: Louis is a hybrid mercenary. His latest mark, a rebel Captain named Harry Styles, isn't about to make things easy for him.If Louis’d been a killing man, he could’ve stabbed him.And if he’d been a stupider man, he could’ve kissed him. (And why not, when his lips were right there and so pink in the silver light of the stars and he was looking at Louis like that).And if he’d been a man at all, none of this would’ve been happening.
Relationships: (Minor), Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan/Zayn Malik
Comments: 36
Kudos: 169
Collections: 1D Hybrid Fic Fest





	Big Sky

**Author's Note:**

> We're finally here, folks. I'd like to thank the mods here at the Hybrid Fic Fest, you've been wonderful.
> 
> This was written for the prompt:  
  
_Person A (a hybrid) is a Space Cowboy hired to bring in the infamous, but elusive, Captain X (a human) who is leading an uprising against (insert evil ruler here). Person A gets more than he bargained for when it becomes clear that Captain X isn’t at all how he’s been portrayed._
> 
> May or may not have wildly veered off course on that one. Who's to say.
> 
> Title is from an Orville Peck song of the same name. Soundtrack for this fic can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7ntIq2hT8U9enoohfiwNr4?si=UumE35L1TdaHGe-fOgCV9g). 
> 
> Enjoy, my loves.

_ The Tooth Nebula. Babel 227. South Quadrant. Time Code: 32718. _

Louis knew, intellectually, that the genetically modified tobacco he was smoking tasted like shit. Still, he was on his third cigarette. Something about waiting in the eastern courtyard of the Great Monastery of Babel 227 while two bright suns shone overhead put him in the mood for chain smoking, so he’d helped himself to some contraband from Mother Superior’s office. 

The ceaseless noise of the fountain beside him was almost calming—he liked the sight and the distraction, but his ears itched at the thought of Babel water. It wasn’t a planet that thought about any hybrid passers-through—few were—so he took care not to eat or drink anything while he was here. Chemical sensitivity was a real bitch to navigate, sometimes. That was sort of the point.

The cigarettes were a foreign import, so they were mostly fine. But he’d need to get off this rock pretty fucking quickly after his meeting.

He took another drag and looked around the courtyard. Still, it was just nuns. Then, his ears pricked up; he heard scuffling footsteps behind him. 

Louis kept his body language casual—_ nothing to see here, not reaching for my laser blaster at all— _and turned. 

“D’you have to pick _ this _place?” 

Louis raised his eyebrows as he took in the woman in front of him. She looked a little worse than the last time they’d met—a darkness under her eyes that smudgy powder was doing nothing to hide—and her shuffling feet and twitching fingers were exactly what he’d been hoping to see. 

Louis narrowed his eyes at her. “Molly, love, no offense, but last time we met you tried to have me framed for interstellar terrorism. I take that kind of thing to heart, personally.” Louis flattened a hand to his chest and batted his eyelashes at her. 

Molly’s eyebrows pinched and she looked like she was about to argue—say something sharp like, _ shouldn’t have stuck your whiskers where they didn’t belong, then— _ but a passing Monk stepped too close to her and she jumped, clamping her mouth shut.   
  
The monk didn’t react, but Molly watched him go before turning back to Louis. Her expression was devoid of anger, confirming Louis’ hunch that this meeting wasn’t about that; Molly had bigger fish to fry these days than outlaw-leaning space ports and mercs like himself in possession of a list of the lot of them. (Not that there were any other mercs like him). 

“You know that was strictly business, kitten,” she tried, a shaky smile appearing on her face. 

Louis growled at her. 

She raised her hands. “Easy, easy. I’ve learnt my lesson, I promise. I’m just here to offer you a job, alright? It’s good money, more than enough to make up for last time. Hear me out.”

Louis huffed and finished his cigarette. He’d been prepared for this, prepared to say _ fuck you _ and walk away. Molly Carbendal wasn’t some second-rate warlord looking to lowball an arms dealer, and she _ certainly _wasn’t anyone Louis needed to be messing with. High Counsellor to the most corrupt Senate in the whole fucking galaxy; twenty settled planets, eighty habitable moons, thousands of government members, and all of it more rotten than a crate of parps left in a hold for a year.

So, Louis should have stuck to his plan and spat in her face. But he didn’t. Instead, he bit his cheek and listened to the fountain until Molly started checking her wrist console impatiently. 

Louis cursed himself, then asked, “What kinda job?” 

Molly grinned at him—toothy, still a little too tight at the edges because she wasn’t dumb enough to cross him a second time (at least, not in person)—and pulled out a thumb drive. 

“Information’s all on that. I need you to bring someone in.”

Louis took the drive and zipped it into one of the small pockets on his jacket sleeve. Being a mercenary involved having a jacket with more pockets than any sane person could ever fathom; Louis had learnt that pretty early on. He fished a new cigarette from the carton, tapped it a few times, then placed it into his mouth so he could ask around it, “For how much?” just to see Molly wince. 

“Fifty thousand upon delivery. Half that if he’s dead.” 

Louis forced himself to not react. He kept his voice level, kept his tail from curling up in excitement like it wanted to, and said, “Must really want the poor fucker. Can I ask why?” He tilted his head and smiled the scruffy-kitten smile that never failed to land him free drinks from bigotted idiots. “You know how my kind are about..._ curiosities _, love.” 

Molly wasn’t an idiot, but she _ was _a bigot. She laughed a little, letting her guard down for the first time since she’d walked into the monastery. “It’s all on the drive. You have two months to deliver him. I’m taking a risk offering you a job this big; after this, we’re even.”

Louis nodded around his cigarette. “‘Course,” he said, tapping off his ash and meaning no such fucking thing. 

Molly nodded, distracted by a ping from her console. Louis slipped away in the time it took her to type out a reply. He smiled to himself as he snuck through the bowels of the monastery, imagining the surprise and horror on her face at being left alone in the holiest place on the planet. 

Louis’d finished off his last cigarette by the time he’d made it back to the rental space he’d left his ship. He made a face at her as he crushed the butt under his boot. She was poky, rusty, and shitty; her paint was a garish yellow colour that he never would’ve chosen, and she smelt like warm fish. 

Louis normally liked fish, but spending a month flying around in that bucket of bolts had ruined his appetite for good. His old starskipper—a real beauty, a fucking pleasure to handle—hadn’t survived a particularly nasty run in with some raider’s drones in the smog-filled skies over Milton 9, so he’d had to say goodbye to her and take one of the bastard’s ships instead. After he’d killed every last one of their drones, knocked the whole party out and left their unconscious bodies atop the highest building he could find, of course. 

He was dreading spending a single ‘nother second in her. _ But… fifty thousand, _ he thought, shivering. With that amount of money he could buy himself a new ship; he could get himself a grav-suit; he’d be set for _ months. _He could maybe even save some to send back to the not-so-little ones, though they always complained when he did that. 

He shook off the thought before it could get any further. He had a new job to do; he didn’t have time to miss them. 

He paid the little boy manning the rental booth—far too young to be working, but Babylon 227 was just that special kind of shit-hole—and hopped into his ship. He made a face at the smell, then ducked into the cockpit. The navigation controls were ripped right open from Louis’ fruitless attempts at modifying her thrusters into something that belonged in this century. He shoved loose wires away with one hand and pulled the thumb drive from his pocket with the other. He squinted at the drive, then at the main console. 

There wasn’t a compatible slot for it.

“You’re a piece of shit, you know that?” he asked.

Fifteen minutes of swearing, using his laser blaster as a makeshift soldering iron, and a few minor burns, and he’d managed to rig up something that should be able to read the drive if he inserted it at the right angle.

He held his breath, then pushed it in. Nothing happened for a moment, so Louis rolled his eyes and gave the dashboard a thump.

The console spluttered to life, and Louis’s eyes scanned over the stream of data. His pupils narrowed into slits, ears twitching as he read. 

Then, he collapsed back into the chair. He turned his attention away from the information and onto the blurry blue-and-white photo. The man was young, for a captain; bright eyed and bushy haired, sweet-lipped and lovely. He didn’t look like a threat. No, he looked like an angel—the kind of good-hearted boy one might bring home and let one’s mother feed Gregartian oatmeal to. 

Louis grinned. He knew exactly what it was like to be underestimated; he wouldn’t make that mistake. 

“Alright, Harry Styles,” Louis purred, crossed his hands behind his head. “Game on.” 

  


_ Rib Sector. Scorpio Alpha System. Moon R. Time Code: 33223. _

Louis was looking forward to prison. Depending on your viewpoint, he’d been only twice, and neither had been the _ best _of times (though one was a significantly longer stay), but this time was different. He was here for work. 

And also to stuff his pockets full of those delicious, edible stew packets from the prison galley. Hard to come by, those. 

Well. Not as hard as you might think, actually. Punch the right politician in the nose on a busy street in Capital Fair, and the Scorpio system’s famous police drones were on you faster than the man could stop the bleeding. 

No need for a trial, not for Louis’ kind, and especially not for one without an owner; what sort of lawyer was going to waste their time defending a rabid animal, after all. As much as it pissed him off, it worked to Louis’ advantage, this time. 

So here he was, leaning against the shiny plastic wall of the artificial prison garden, poking at a synthetic fern while he waited for the Northern Cell Block to arrive for their scheduled hour of yard time. 

He’d only have half an hour of overlap each day to study his mark, but that should be enough. 

He didn’t have many questions he needed to answer, and the most important one would reveal itself in no time. _ Why would a rebel captain let himself get locked up? _

It couldn’t something as simple as to render himself untouchable to his enemies; that was a happy side effect, maybe, but surely not the core reason. After all, Louis was here under the employ of one of said enemies. So, what was it? Wrong side of the galaxy to be making secret, incarceration-exclusive deals with cons, _ right _side of the galaxy to be treated well until his sentence was over.

In _ thirty years _. 

Louis scoffed. Harry Styles had spent the past five years planet-hopping in an unidentified starcruiser—no doubt something expensive he’d knicked that was far too embarrassing for anyone on the Senate to breathe a word about—adding to his renegade crew and starting fires in beat-down hell-holes. And now, here he was; locked up for smuggling teera pears (also known as pissing off the local magistrate). Louis couldn’t help but wonder why. 

No one starts a revolution just to let it waste away. Not that easily. 

There was a loud, blaring sound—Louis’d only been here a day, and he could already tell that noise was going to make his ears bleed soon enough—and the double doors on the other side of the hall opened. The Scorpio system’s pink-hued sun blared overhead, light filtering down through the reinforced glass roof to illuminate the entering prisoners. It was aggressively bright in here, but Louis was grateful for it when he caught sight of his mark. 

Harry Styles was a beautiful man, that much he’d been able to tell from a shitty photograph. This close, though… he was almost breathtaking. Especially when he smiled like that at the other prisoners that were gathered around him like cyberrats around the universe’s most gorgeous dumpster. Louis pressed himself further out of sight as he watched them interact—loud laughs, playful jabs, and solemn nods every so often. And Harry in the middle of it all, looking for all the world like he belonged in a fake garden in a real prison on Moon R. 

Louis was starting to have an idea of what kind of game he was playing. Begrudging respect followed, then wry humour. 

_ It’s possible to be both a genius and an absolute idiot, _ Louis thought, watching his target smile up at the sunlight. There were little gold flecks in his hair, and Louis caught his scent from across the room—fresh flowers and clean circuit boards, an unusual combination. _ And Harry Styles spending a few months in prison to recruit for his doomed revolution is a great example of that. _

Not that Louis knew for sure that’s what he was doing. He knew better than to act on theories. It was always smarter to wait for them to become hunches; hunches were much more reliable. 

Someone tapped on Harry’s shoulder, and he turned to them with an attentive expression. Then, he happened to glance over their shoulder, right at where Louis was partly-hidden behind a neon blue fern. 

Harry frowned for a moment, and Louis sighed. 

He folded his arms over his chest and hunched in on himself. Pulling a frown on his face, he glared at Harry. 

Harry tilted his head to the side and flicked his eyes over his form, studying him. Then his companion waved at his face to get his attention, and he snapped out of it. 

_ Rib Sector. Scorpio Alpha System. Moon R. Time Code: 33541. _

This time when the speakers blared and the doors slid open, Harry walked out first, eyes scanning over the room with purpose. 

Louis wasn’t surprised, and he certainly wasn’t hiding this time. Harry spotted him in an efficient few seconds, turned to make some excuse to his disciples, then approached. 

His steps were slow, purposeful; he kept his eyes lowered and his palms visible. 

Louis studied his posture with a frown. _ Not his first time walking up to a hybrid, then, _he mused. He wasn’t sure if that would make the job easier or harder. 

“Hiiii,” Harry breathed once he was close enough to be heard. He smiled a beatific smile—not hard to see how he’d managed to convince so many people to his side, when his face did that—and gestured to the empty bench beside Louis. “My name’s Harry. Mind if I sit?” 

Louis’d already decided how he’d play this—cold enough to seem realistic, vulnerable enough to get his attention—but in that moment he didn’t quite feel like doing the first part very much. 

“No,” he said, watching Harry carefully as he shuffled to a seat next to him. “I’m Louis.”

“Louis,” Harry said, as if tasting the name. “You’re new here, right?” Harry asked.

Louis sent him a harsh look. 

Harry huffed out an embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. I know I’d remember you, is all.” 

“Is it the…” Louis trailed off, motioning to the ears nestled in his messy hair. Harry’s eyes snapped up to look at them—the first time he’d done that, Louis noticed—and they twitched in response. Traitors. 

“The hair?” Harry grinned. “Yeah. Very rugged.”

Louis sat back and studied him. He’d met his fair share of leaders; power-hungry assholes, so high on the drug of their ego that the only languages they spoke were ideology and fear. This one didn’t seem like that. 

Not at first, at least. That was usually more dangerous. 

“Cheers,” Louis let himself say, smiling back a genuine smile. 

Harry sniffed and looked away for a moment. “What are you in for?”

Louis rolled his eyes. “Oh—um.” He hunched his shoulders and scratched at his arm, tail curling in his lap dejectedly. 

Harry reacted as intended. He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a comforting whisper, hand hovering over Louis’ knee but too polite to rest there without permission. “You can tell me, Louis. If you want. I’m a friend to hybrids. I know what it’s like out there for you.” 

_ You don’t know shit, pal. _Louis wanted to laugh. 

He looked up at Harry with teary eyes. “Really?” he asked, bottom lip quivering. Then, he took a deep breath to gather himself, because he _ was _laying it on a little thick. 

Harry didn’t seem to think so, though. He looked heartbroken, ready to take a bullet for this poor little kitten boy he’d only just met. 

Could’ve made Louis’ cold, dead heart melt, that, if it wasn’t so predictable. 

“I—uh—I stole some food. I was starving, and it was just sitting there, no one needed it, I–”

Harry made a soft tutting noise. “You were trying to keep yourself alive and got locked up for it. I’m so sorry.”

Louis shrugged. “That’s what happens to bad kittens like me.” 

“No,” Harry said fiercely, crowding closer. “You’re not bad, Louis. The system is bad.” 

Louis wrinkled his nose. “The Scorpio system?” 

Harry’s lips twitched. “No, I mean, like. Everything. Society, and the galactic parliament, and the Universal senate. It’s broken down, and people like you and me are suffering.”

Louis giggled nervously. “You sound like one of those angry posters. _ Take back your liberty!” _

Harry ducked his head and laughed self-deprecatingly. “S’pose I do, yeah. Sorry.”

He withdrew a little, moving to stand up. 

Louis’ eyes narrowed, then he reached out to grab Harry’s arm—razor-fast, quicker than he could blink. 

And blink he certainly didn’t; he just stared with wide green eyes as Louis inserted himself into Harry’s space with a shy grin his fringe falling into his eyes. 

“I don’t mind,” he whispered. 

Harry gulped, then smiled shakily. “Great. That’s great, um. I–”

_ Whammp, _the speakers blared. Louis recoiled sharply, unable to stop himself from covering his ears on instinct. The noise had truly taken him by surprise, that time. He fucking hated surprises. 

Harry made a mournful noise, reaching out to him. 

“Eastern cell block inmates, yard time is over! Out you go,” yelled one of the guards. An enforcement bot to her left leant a weight to her words. 

Louis stood and smiled at Harry gently. “That’s me off, then.”

Harry smiled back, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Bye, Louis. See you tomorrow?” 

Louis’ ears twitched. “Tomorrow,” he promised. 

_ Rib Sector. Scorpio Alpha System. Moon R. Time Code: 33590. _

By the time ‘tomorrow’ had rolled around, Louis had devised a plan. 

It was the perfect kind of plan: the lazy kind. Very easy to follow, those. 

All he had to do was find the biggest, angriest fucker in the mess hall and spit in his calcium stew. 

One black eye later, and he was curled up on a bench in the garden, staring up at the pink sun until his good eye started aching. 

“Louis?” 

Louis looked over. Harry was standing with his usual pack of followers. They’d barely made it two steps into the garden before Harry had spotted Louis’ new and improved face. 

He was across the room in an instant, and this time his crew were hot on his heels. 

Louis pivoted on the bench, setting his feet on the artificial dirt in time for Harry to fall to his knees in front of him. 

_ Christ, the heart on this one, _ Louis thought as Harry’s hands came up to frame his face, turning his head gently so he could inspect the damage. _ It’s a wonder he’s still alive, walking around caring this much about people he’s just met. _

But Louis wasn’t a person, not really. His tail curled around Harry’s wrist and his ears twitched from the industrial noises of the factory complex halfway across the moon. It was his very lack of personhood that had Harry and his braindead goons cooing over him like he was a three-legged dog they’d found in an alleyway. 

“Who did this to you?” Harry asked. It was asked softly, tender and gentle and all things sweet. That wasn’t unexpected. Then again, neither was the anger that hid beneath Harry’s kind expression; in fact, it was the anger Louis was interested in. 

He shrugged and sniffed. “It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled. “I deserved it.” 

Louis felt a rare moment of guilt. His words caused the reaction they were supposed to—Harry’s followers frowning and mumbling to each other about what they could do to help him, and Harry himself, sitting there with a broken chest and his heart hanging out—but it didn’t feel fun, not like the other jobs Louis’d done like this. 

Not that it mattered if he enjoyed himself. He was getting paid either way. 

Harry retracted his hands and stood slowly.   
  
“I’m sure that’s not true.” His expression was fierce. “Don’t go anywhere, ok? I’ll be right back.” 

“‘Kay,” Louis mumbled, curling back into himself. 

Harry hesitated for a moment, then he backed away. 

Louis couldn’t help but listen in to the whispered conversation that began between Harry and his crew. 

“We’re taking him with us.” It was presented with an authoritative tone, one that Louis was beginning to wonder if Harry actually possessed. But, no; there he was, barking orders like the best of them.

“We’re not gonna argue with you on this one, H,” one of the others replied, followed by several grunted agreements. 

“Do you want us to move up the schedule? It might be difficult,” asked another. She sounded sympathetic, but a little passive aggressive. 

“I know, Liz. I don’t want to ask that of you all.” Harry sighed, and Louis glanced over at him long enough to catch the searching look Harry was sending his way. “How much longer do you think we need to get everyone on board?” 

Liz hummed. “A week, at least.”

Louis clenched his teeth. Another week in this place? Sure, the food was alright, but the lights and the noises and smells—it was all starting to get to him. 

The vacuum of space was looking downright friendly, in comparison. 

Harry seemed to read something in his face. He steeled his shoulders and turned back to his crew. “Fuck it, we’ve done enough here. Wrap up what you need to tonight; we’re taking off tomorrow.”

Liz started to protest, and Harry’s features softened. 

“We’ve been here too long already, I can tell you’re all sick of it. The people we’ve enlisted will have to just be enough.”

A burly man clapped Harry on the back. “On it, Captain. C’mon, you lot.” He shepherded the group away, and dispersed into the crowds. 

Louis couldn’t be bothered to pay too much attention to what they were all saying after that. It was the same thing over and over again, repeated to different inmates around the room; _ It’s happening tomorrow. Get ready. _

“Louis?” 

Louis looked up to see Harry standing before him. He wondered how he’d missed the bags under his eyes, the sad greasiness of his hair. 

“Hm?” 

Harry sat down next to him. He let out a sigh. “Would you like to get out of here?” He turned his head to look into Louis’ eyes, then clarified, “with me?” 

Louis uncurled his legs, letting one drop to the ground and the other onto the bench, knee pressed firmly against Harry’s thigh. Harry looked down at it in surprise, then a flicker of a smile passed over his face. 

“Where are we going?” Louis asked, leaning further into Harry’s space. 

He smelt like engine oil and coffee, somehow; it was like the scents had taken root beneath his skin. It reminded Louis of his ship—the blown up one, not the hunk of yellow bullshit that he’d sold on his way here for half of what it was worth, just to be rid of the fucker. 

Harry placed his hand on Louis’ knee, then looked up at him in alarm, like he hadn’t meant to do that. 

Louis stayed perfectly still.

Harry didn’t remove his hand. 

“You’re hand is warm,” Louis said. Maybe Harry didn’t know that. 

Harry huffed out a laugh, shoulders loosening. “We’re going to the Divinia system. It’s just passed—”

“I know where it is,” Louis interrupted. At Harry’s surprised look, he widened his eyes innocently. “I’ve seen maps.”

“Cool.” 

Louis snorted. “Cool,” he parrotted back mockingly. 

Harry smiled at him, then frowned. Louis’ eye itched just from the way Harry was looking at it. 

“Are you going to be alright tonight?” he asked, daring to lift his hand up to Louis’ face.

Well, fuck _ that. _ Louis batted his hand away and scooted back on the bench until he was out of Harry’s reach. His knee felt cold where Harry’s hand had just been, but honestly, he only had a finite amount of patience for the _ take care of me! I’m just a kitty! _routine, and he drew the line at face touching. 

Harry held his hands up in the air like he was surrendering. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.” 

His voice was smooth and understanding. 

Louis tilted his head to the side, because it almost sounded like he _ did _know he shouldn’t have done that. 

He opened his mouth to ask Harry to explain—there was nothing on his file about him or his family ever owning a hybrid despite being rich enough—but then the alarm blared and the doors went _ snick _and Louis was too busy trying not to attack everything that moved. 

Harry stood slowly, edging backwards. He was looking at Louis expectantly, and Louis realised that he’d failed to answer Harry’s question. 

He stood in one smooth movement, running a hand down his stomach to centre himself in his body. “I’ll be fine,” he promised. 

Harry nodded. He turned away, his crew materialising out of the crowd to stand beside him. 

Louis didn’t spare them another look as he marched from the room. 

_ Rib Sector. Scorpio Alpha System. Moon R. Time Code 33608. _

_ What a terrible plan, _Louis mused. His ears were twitching this way and that from all the noise and the violence happening in the mess hall below him. 

He leant against the doorframe of his cell—the laser bars had been disabled a few minutes ago, presumably by one of Harry’s crew—and he watched as Moon R’s main incarceration facility descended into absolute chaos. 

There were inmates punching out the robotic guards, people throwing tables at walls, screaming and shouting, and a not insubstantial amount of blood. 

Louis made a face. He prefered elegant plans—his marks never knew what hit them—and this was the exact fucking reason why. 

“Louis!” 

Louis sighed, then turned to see Harry speeding towards him. He screeched to a halt and ducked out of the way of a laser blast from below, sparks flying all around him as it hit the wall.

Louis rolled his eyes. He pulled his blaster from one of his jacket pockets, having helped himself to his confiscated items not long after Harry’s escape plan had launched into motion. He’d aimed, shot, and tucked it away in the time it took Harry to pat all the embers out of his hair.

Harry pressed his back to the railing, then turned to peer down at the mess hall. Louis watched his face as he scanned the chaos for the guard that had shot at him, then raised his eyebrows when he found it lying flat on the ground with a smooth hole through its central processing unit. 

He looked back at Louis—not accusingly, not suspicious at all despite the fact that Louis wasn’t even wearing his uniform anymore, _ typical— _and motioned frantically for Louis to join him under the cover of the railing. 

_ How cute, he’s worried about me getting shot. _Louis fell into a crouch, and Harry crawled towards him. 

“Are you okay?” he asked, once he was within talking distance. 

Louis nodded, then jerked his head to the god awful mess that was happening below them. “This your doing?” 

Harry made a face. “Not exactly. Prison escapes can be tricky when you’re trying to free about seventy percent of the population. Things get ugly pretty quickly. Almost like they don’t want people to just walk right out, huh?” he tried to joke. 

Louis frowned. Harry was talking like he’d done this before, but there was nothing like that in his file. Apparently the Senate had kept some of Harry’s more humiliating victories off their records—or, at least, the one’s Molly’d given Louis. Not exactly a surprise.

Something beeped from underneath Harry’s shirt, and he tugged his collar down to reveal a very dated communicator that was stuck to his sternum. Harry squinted at the coloured lights flashing on it, then cursed. 

“C’mon, we need to get to the ship.” 

“Ship?” Louis asked, following as Harry crouched and started running for the corridor that lead to the medbay. 

“Yep. Orca class, stole her from a colonising mission in the Uriel sector,” Harry explained over his shoulder. He ducked into the corridor, then motioned for Louis to follow. “We’re a bit new to her still, but she’ll fit us all no problem.” 

_ Well, no shit, _ Louis thought, trotting after Harry. _ An Orca could fit half a small settlement, if you were hard up. _

The further they walked down the hallway, the more people started appearing; pairs or groups of them, all joining them from the tunnels that lead to the other sections of the prison. They all seemed a little frantic, but they nodded at Harry as they passed. 

Between that and the news that Harry was the captain of an _ Orca— _at Louis’ last count, only three even fucking existed—well. Louis found himself begrudgingly impressed. 

Suddenly, there was a loud _ bang!— _ the whole facility seemed to rock with it.   
  
Louis tensed. He had a feeling he recognised that sound, but he was hoping he was wrong. 

“That’d be her now,” Harry grinned. He came to a stop at an emergency air vent—the kind meant to flush the prison’s population out into the oxygen-less atmosphere of Moon R, if it came to that—and the gathering crowd behind them came to a halt as well. 

Harry pulled something from his trousers and plugged it into a panel on the wall. The screen flickered out for a moment, and when it came back on it was a haunting shade of bright blue. 

_ So much for being wrong, _ Louis thought. He curled his hands into fists, resisting the urge to badger Harry with questions. Questions like, _ Are you fucking insane? Dropping the grav shields and landing an Orca on a moon? What are we supposed to do, take a merry old stroll over to it?, _ because the character he was playing wouldn’t have a single clue what was about to happen.   
  
Harry mumbled something into the communicator on his chest, then turned towards the crowd. 

“Alright, everybody!” he shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth. “It’s gonna get bumpy!”

The sounds of quieting-down blaster fire (and the tell-tale rumbling of a big fuck off starcruiser engine) were drowned out by cheers and hollering. 

Louis rolled his eyes, but Harry grinned. He looked like he was having the time of his life. 

Then, the air vent curled open and Louis was no longer able to tell which way was up.

One second he was standing there, and the next he was being sucked forwards, propelled at great speed through a dark tunnel and barrelling towards the bright.

He landed on his feet—are you surprised?—but it took his eyes and ears a few moments to adjust to his new surroundings. 

He jumped out of the way just in time for a burly woman to crash into the ground where he’d just been. She groaned, and pushed herself upright.  
  
Louis looked up, and all around him people were doing the same. There were hundreds of them all crashing down from five different holes in the ceiling of a huge silver room. 

_ Cargo hold, _ Louis thought, eyes flicking over the piles of crates pushed over to the far wall. There were paths cleared for a few doors here and there, each marked with a different string of letters. _ Not enough supplies for this amount of people. _ His eyes scanned over the space-safe metal of the crates, recognising symbols and numbers here and there that told him they’d come from a few different ports (and not the senate-friendly ones, at that). _ We’ll need to restock in… hm. Four days. _

Someone else crashed into the ground behind him, swearing up a storm. 

Louis ignored them, turning his attention up. The holes were interesting—he didn’t know Orcas had vacuum loading—and Louis was forced to admit that maybe, just maybe, Harry’s plan wasn’t so terrible after all.   
  
Might not have been the most elegant mode of transportation (and judging by the pained winces of the convicts around him, he’d say there was a consensus on that) but Louis was hard pressed to think of a more efficient way of getting several hundred people onto a ship this big from a moon that small in such a short window. 

Said window was getting narrower and narrower—Louis guessed they had about twenty minutes before reinforcements arrived from the planet below. 

Louis looked around for a crewmember, for anyone who seemed like they knew what they were doing. Harry was nowhere to be found, but that didn’t mean that Louis couldn’t improvise.

He spotted someone he recognised heading towards a door—_ Liz, _he remembered Harry calling her.

He ran after her. 

“Hey!” he said. 

She turned, halfway through punching in an access code. She looked him up and down, and her face soured. 

“Yes?”

“Can I come with you?” 

“What?” 

Louis widened his eyes. 

She sighed, then shrugged. “Sure, whatever. C’mon, kitten.” 

Louis resisted the urge to put a blaster hole through her leg. He ducked through the open door, letting it squeeze shut behind him.

“Are they just going to stay in there?” he asked, trailing after her as she made a sharp right turn, then another. 

“Nah, Niall’s on it,” she answered. “They’ll get rooms and their vote of what planet they want to be dropped off on.”

_ Interesting. _Louis eyed the different rooms as they past, catching glimpses of servers and boilers and grav-field generators. The sub-level of a ship this big was always where all the juicy things were: the pesky little bits and bobs that, if tampered with, brought the whole thing to a stand still. 

Louis didn’t anticipate needing that information—his plan was a little bit more dignified than that, thank you very much—but it was always good to have a backup. What was more useful to him was how clean everything looked. Dust, rust, wiremites; Harry’s crew would have had to work hard to keep an Orca in such good condition. Either that, or they’d stolen it alarmingly recently. 

“So, they’re not staying on the ship?” 

Liz sent him an impatient look over her shoulder. Louis could tell she was getting bored of indulging him.

“Save your questions for Harry,” she snapped. “C’mon, in here.” 

She hauled open an elevator door and stepped inside. 

Louis caught a glimpse of the inside of the shaft. It seemed to go up and up and up.

He didn’t ask any more questions, and Liz didn’t give him any more answers on the trip to the bridge.

The doors opened automatically this time, revealing a room full of computer banks, navigational equipment, fried circuit boards (not a great sign) and a whole lot of arguing. 

Louis’ ears flattened back against his head. 

Liz cursed, stomping out. 

“Why aren’t we moving? We’re sitting ducks here!”

In an instant, she was absorbed into the argument.

There were only ten crewmembers up here, but _ fuck _if they didn’t make enough noise for a whole damn crowd. And Harry was in the middle of it all, trying (and failing) to keep the peace. 

Louis tuned out their conversation—he’d go into sensory overload trying to understand what they were saying—and instead made himself small enough that no one noticed as he snuck behind the communications bank and sat himself down at the abandoned piloting station. 

_ Hm. _He tapped on the screen, navigating away from the dummed-down console that senate-issued ships came programmed with (they were too expensive to not be idiot-proof) because the things Louis needed to see were hidden in the raw coding of the flight system. His eyes narrowed into slits as he scanned over the strings of numbers and shifting charts. A good chunk of it went over his head—he’d never flown something that needed so many boosters just to get into the air—but he was able to figure out what the problem was. 

In the process of attaching the ship’s vacuum shoots to the prison facility, they’d allowed the ship’s system to interface with the Moon’s automatic security protocols. An unavoidable little blunder, especially if this was a rushed job. 

The ship wasn’t going anywhere while the facility was on lockdown—which was automatic; it wouldn’t turn off while the grav-shields were down—and raising the shields back up would mean they’d be stuck here.

The arguing behind him raised in pitch. Louis could barely focus over the sound of it. He pulled up the long range scanner—as expected, a fleet of Jay-class defence drones were incoming. Intercept was due in five minutes and thirty one seconds. He chanced a look over the back of his chair and caught sight of the main read-out screen the group was huddled around and using to loudly point out different solutions. He tapped a few buttons on his own screen and sent the read-out of the long range scanner to theirs. 

They froze for a moment, staring at the little blue dots. _ That should distract them, _Louis thought, turning back to the pilot console. 

He just needed a second of peace. The only time he’d been in a situation like this wasn’t something he cared to remember often, but he’d used a handy little virus to separate a ship (much smaller than this one, mind) from the maximum security facility it was linked to. It wasn’t an elegant solution, but it was quick and dirty enough to get them into the sky before the drones entered firing range. 

He’d just finished hiding the virus in the communication code that the cargo hold was sending to the facility when someone behind him had a bright idea. 

“Hey, what if the vacuum shoots connected us to the prison’s automatic security protocols?”

A beat.

“Shit, that’s it!” 

Louis panicked, hearing footsteps coming his way. He ducked out of the chair, but there wasn’t enough time to hide. 

“Louis?”   
  
Harry was standing frozen with one hand on the chair. 

Louis took a step backwards and glanced pointedly towards the door (and the rest of the crew standing between him and it, staring at him).

Harry shook himself off. “Hey, it’s alright. We’re just in a bit of a crisis right now, I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

The scanner trilled. A crewmember Louis didn’t recognise glanced down at it and swore.  
  
“Captain?”

Harry sat himself down, fingers tapping on the screen faster than Louis could follow them. 

“You were right, Liam,” he said. “But the ship’s already bypassed the connection somehow—hang on, I think I can just–”

The engine roared to life beneath their feet; the floor was practically vibrating with it, sending shivers down Louis’ spine.

Harry’s crew cheered and Louis tried not to look smug.

By the time the drones reached the prison facility on Moon R, it was the find the final traces of an Orca class starcruiser’s hyperspeed trail fast fading into stardust. 

The moment of celebration didn’t last very long. 

“Alright, let’s get our heads back on,” Harry said, and everyone leapt to action as if they’d been given a normal command. 

Liz sat herself down at the far desk and began a complicated-looking process with the deep space scanner. The one apparently called Liam muttered something into his wrist communicator and then disappeared out the door. The rest of the crewmembers spread out across various stations, talking amongst themselves in jargon (and sometimes swearing at the screens creatively). It was an odd atmosphere; Louis got the immediate impression that this motley bunch of revolutionaries were as competent as they were stupid, and they were quite a lot of both.

Louis looked back at Harry only to find he was already staring at him. 

Harry smiled gently, but his eyes still betrayed confusion. 

He was probably wondering why Louis was here, loitering next to the pilot’s chair moments after a barely-averted crisis. Louis hunched a little further into himself, ears lilting down to the comfort of his hair. 

Harry frowned at the action. “Zayn,” he said, not turning. “Could you get Niall up here?”

One of the crewmembers spun around in his chair. The backlighting from his screen—the contents of which was, at a glance, potentially encrypted and definitely above Louis’ paygrade—made the bright green highlights in his hair stand out in the otherwise gloomy bridge. Zayn tilted his head and looked Louis up and down with casual interest.  
  
He tapped the side of his head, and Louis heard the faint sound of a inner-ear communicator buzz to life. “Dr Horan?” he asked with a lilting confidence that put Louis on edge.

There was a moment of static, then a voice Louis wasn’t supposed to be hearing piped up.

“Wot?”

“Boss wants you.”

“Tell him to fuck off.”   
  
Zayn snorted, and Harry raised his eyebrows. 

“Seriously, babe.”

Grunting from the comm; fingers tapping against the glass of the screens in the bridge; and the sound of an Orca class engine rumbling from five stories down.

“I’m coming. But you can tell the uppity little prick that he can’t just drop five hundred and seventy three prisoners from the ceiling of our cargo hold and expect there to be no bumps and bruises for me to clean up–”

“He says he’s coming and he loves you,” Zayn said, face breaking out of its mask of indifference just long enough for him to bat his eyelashes at Harry sarcastically. 

_ Second in command, then, _ Louis thought when all Harry did was roll his eyes. _ Or close to it. _

“Louis?” 

Louis felt a touch to his tail, gently grasping it and shifting it away. He startled, looking back at Harry. He hadn’t even realised his tail had wondered onto Harry’s leg. Harry let go, and Louis’ tail curled around his own calf (probably seeking comfort after its rejection, the sensitive little shit).

“Sorry, I didn’t–”

“It’s okay.” Harry smiled. “Niall’s gonna be here in a second. He’s the ship’s doctor. He’s a bit of a grump but you can trust him. He’ll show you somewhere you can sleep; is that okay?”

Louis ear flicked as Liz snorted from across the room. Harry didn’t seem to notice.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Louis said.

Harry’s attention turned back to the screen—flashy, important things did tend to capture the eye—but he kept his body angled towards Louis as he worked.

Louis glanced at it and saw the first sketches of a flight plan. The destination was the Divinia system, but he already knew that. He tried to make sense of the rest of it. There were a lot of stops: a few planet names he recognised, a few he didn’t, and then the door to the bridge rolled open. 

“I’m here! Where’s the fire.” 

Louis resisted the urge to laugh. The man who had just entered spoke brashly, voice accented with something that might have been Irish (either that or Polgarwenian; it was hard to tell, sometimes).

“Fire’s over there, babes,” Zayn said, not looking up from his screen. “His name’s Louis.”

Niall frowned and followed Zayn’s vague gesture. His eyes landed on Louis, then widened. Louis made himself hunch behind Harry’s chair just a little, turning his head to make it seem like he was trying to hide his black eye (and failing). 

“You making friends in lock-up, sunshine?” Niall asked, voice cheery in a way Louis suspected was one hundred percent intentional. 

Harry turned in his chair and grinned at Niall, whose face eased a little at the sight. 

“Did you miss the mission brief, Doc? Making friends was only the entire bloody plan.”  
  
Niall rolled his eyes. “Got me there, Captain. Good one.”

Harry shrugged, then nodded towards Louis.   
  
“Do you think you can do me a favour and find Louis a spare room to sleep in? Somewhere quiet.”

Niall nodded easily and stuck his hand out towards Louis as if to introduce himself. 

Louis batted his hand away automatically. It was an instinct he normally resisted, but it was worth giving in to for the way Harry barked out a surprised laughed.

“Maybe don’t do that.”

“Yeah, uh—sorry, Louis,” Niall stammered. Then, he leaned over to Harry and whispered, “you sure he won’t bite my bits off?”

Louis was willing to pretend he didn’t hear that—a rare act of generosity.

Harry gave Niall a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t wave ‘em about everywhere; that’ll be a start.”  
  
“Fuck off. Alright, Mister Louis, sir, after you,” Niall waved towards the door.

Louis went. He didn’t look back at Harry, but he could feel eyes following him out of the room.

“So, this one can be yours!” Niall was saying. He threw open the doors in front of him, revealing a standard senate-issue sleeping quarter. There was a bed, a table, a basic computing engine—universal charge to support any number of devices—and a ‘window’. (Window, in this case, translated to a large sticker of mostly-black-partially-stars. To be fair, it was dead accurate to what Louis would be seeing out of a _ real _window in any starship, except the real view did tend to move.)

“Area’s pretty quiet, since it's Starboard Wing. Just overflow bunks and cargo holds on this side; not a very balanced design, ‘f you ask me. New recruits might be in and out of the floor below you, but most of ‘em won’t be staying.”

Louis nodded, stepping into the room. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting his ears flick this way and that as he caught all the sounds from below (and below that to the engine, and above to the blessedly quiet vacuum of space; to his surprise, the ship wasn’t so large that he couldn’t still hear conversation on the bridge if he tried hard enough).

“If the Captain had his way, we’d keep every last lost lamb we stumbled into—not that you’re a lamb, or anything, mate—but his heart’s too big for his boots sometimes, you know what I mean?”

Louis opened his eyes and shook his head. 

Niall crossed his arms, looking like he was regretting saying anything if the price was having to explain himself.

“Resources, and the like. Food? Water? Medicine? Now, I can make do with the cheap shit if I need to, but I’d rather not. Revolution’s an expensive business, and so is not dropping out of the bloody sky.”

Louis related to that more than he could afford to let on.

“You don’t need to worry about any of that, though. Here,” he said, reaching into a small pouch on his belt. “Rub this on your eye for me, will you?”

He made an aborted movement to hold the object out to Louis, then seemed to remember what happened the last time he offered his hand. 

“Catch?” 

Louis blinked, then caught the small tube of salve from midair. He twisted off the cap to give it a cursory sniff, then made a face.

“Yeah, sorry about that. Like I said, the cheap shit.”

Louis lowered the salve and looked up at Niall. Niall seemed surprised by the direct eye contact, but he didn’t shy away from it.

“Thank you,” Louis said.

“Don’t mention it.”

And with that, he was gone.

_ Somewhere beyond the Rib Sector. Time Code: 33784. _

It took Louis four hours to break into the captain’s quarters.

The first hour was spent hacking the computing engine in his room so he could use his personal device without worry of intercept. The second hour was spent taking a well-earned nap underneath his bed—one of the benefits of starship travel was not having to deal with dust—and the third was spent crawling through what felt like a mile’s worth of tunnels. Internal laundry tunnels, to be specific. An Orca class ship meant for colonising? Of course it had laundry tunnels. Lack of intra-ship security coupled with a desire to cut corners in upkeep costs equalled a large washing machine in the bowels of the ship somewhere and a maze of empty, Louis-sized tunnels to travel through. Because of course the revolutionaries weren’t going to let a robot do their laundry. 

That would be exploitative. 

So here he was, the centre of the Harry-stink, trying to blow out the last ember he’d lit using his blaster on the lowest setting to melt through the bolt holding Harry’s laundry shoot closed.

Once he’d blown it out, Louis stood back to survey the damage. He winced.

“He’d have to be as thick as Arachne’s Belt to not notice that,” he said. He cast his gaze around quickly, then grabbed a synthetic fern from a few feet away and placed it in front of the damage. 

He nodded, then turned to face the rest of the room.

To his surprise, the captain’s quarters weren’t that much bigger than his own. But, that couldn’t be right, could it? He walked over to the panel next to the door, gingerly avoiding piles of stale, abandoned clothes on the floor. He tapped the display to life and squinted at the serial number in the bottom right corner, ignoring Harry’s lighting and musical preferences (dim and old Earth). Sure enough, this wasn’t the captain’s quarters; at HRP00015, it wasn’t even the second-in-command’s quarters. It was on the same level as the higher ranking crewmembers, but that was about it in terms of perks.

Louis leant against the wall as he surveyed the room with new eyes. And a new nose—he smelled a pack or three of cigarettes in the chest of drawers. He helped himself to one of them before he got to work searching.

The rest of Harry’s drawers were unexciting. So was his mattress, and his chair, and his sanitation closet, and the pockets in all of his abandoned trousers. Louis was forced to turn his attention to the desk.

It was incredibly organised when compared to the rest of the room. There was a stash of communicators in various states of repair in one corner and an untouched scented candle in the other. In the very centre was a square screen plugged into the computing engine. It was chunkier than Louis had ever seen, and it sputtered to life beneath his fingers like an old drunk in a bar.

It blinked at him, demanding a password.

Louis growled at it. 

He debated the risk of hacking into it and being discovered. He parked himself down in the chair and let his head fall back to stare at the sterile ceiling.

Decisions, decisions.

He fumbled in his pocket for the cigarettes without looking, then cursed when the packet slipped through his fingers. He leaned down to retrieve it, then paused. There was something there, hiding in the shadows beneath the desk. He stretched his hand towards it until his fingers closed over a piece of paper. No, it was too thick to be paper—more like compressed husk, the kind used for biodegradable packaging. 

He lifted the item into the light and stared at it. A laugh escaped him before he could stop it.  
  
It was a piece of what smelled like strawberry packaging, and on it was written two simple, magical words: _ bbbbberries (password). _

Louis was still holding in his amusement as he typed it in. The screen made a few worrying churning noises, then a wave of files began to open. Louis’ pupil’s slitted as he tried to make sense of them all.

Some of them were cargo manifests—from the Orca and from other ships dating back half a decade—and some were news reports—the solar flares in System V are too frequent for any ship larger than a Mako; the mining colony on Psyche 8 has gone missing in a freak asteroid accident—and some of them were personal communications, hidden behind about five different encryptions. Louis breezed passed them (it was easy enough to do from the outgoing end). It looked like Harry had been trying to make contact with a dozen different people. His missives revealed nothing about his intentions; just that he wanted to talk.

Louis happened to catch sight of the only message in his outbox that Harry had chosen to sign. His breath caught in his throat, and he read it five times to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. 

_ Looking to make a deal. Think you’ll be interested. _

_ —Captain X. _

Louis was out of his seat and across the room before he even realised what had happened. His tail was curling around his arm insistently as if to calm him. His shoulders were raised up to his ears, and he was making a low rumbling sound.

_ Captain fucking X, _was his first thought. 

_ I have to get off this ship, _was the next.

_ No, actually. I have to kill him; 25 thousand credits is better than letting him live. _

That one surprised Louis. It shocked him out of his anger, and he found himself able to breathe again. 

Because he’d promised to never kill anyone. He’d made that promise when he was barely older than a boy, unable to deny a pair of pleading, slit-pupiled eyes.

He’d never broken it before; he’d never wanted to.

But, then again. If anyone deserved to die, it was Captain X: the upstart rebel psychopath who’d torched an entire growing facility of hybrids five short years ago. 

The death toll was something in the tens of thousands. The news of it had reached even Louis, disconnected as he tried to be. He’d mourned for them; no one else was going to. All the coverage of the atrocity was focused on the monetary loss to HybriTex—the company who _ used _to be the biggest hybrid breeders in the market. Louis agreed that their facility deserved to burn to the ground. He didn’t agree that his kind had to die to make it happen.

Louis staggered over to the sanitary closet and leaned over the stark white sink, trying to stop himself from throwing up. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing. His mind started to clear, little by little.

Why wouldn’t Molly tell him this? This wasn’t the same thing as leaving off a newly-acquired ship from a drive not-so-full of intel; this was attempted genocide.

As soon as he’d thought the thought, he was answering it. _ Stupid question. Molly’s not an idiot, and only an idiot tells a comet it’s trying to chase a black hole. _

But, that wasn’t quite right. Molly was only offering a fifty percent deduction for bringing the captain in dead; she can’t have cared too much if Louis killed him.

So, the question still stood: why wouldn’t she tell him?

Louis tried to think, but all he could picture was Harry. Harry, cutting off a piece from a strawberry box so he wouldn’t forget the genius password he’d just come up with. Harry, walking towards him with his gaze lowered and his palms open. Harry, smiling at him and underestimating him and not really _ seeing _him, yes, but. He’d never, not once seemed… mad. He’d never once seemed to hate Louis, or hybrids, or anyone but ‘the system’. He’d never once seemed capable of doing something so evil.

Either he was better at pretending than Louis had given him credit for, or something was very wrong with this job.

As if on cue, Louis’ ears pricked at the sound of footsteps from down the hall.

“Shit,” he hissed, rushing to switch off the screen. The footsteps paused for a moment, and Louis heard a voice—Harry’s voice—speaking into a communicator.

Louis used the distraction to open the doors just enough to slip through into the hallway outside. 

He couldn’t see Harry yet, hidden behind a sharp bend in the hallway. He sent a glance down the hall in the opposite direction, judging how far he could get if he started running now. Probably far enough to be out of sight, or to hide behind the exposed gas pipes five doors down.

But, his feet refused to move.

“–Just—can’t it wait until tomorrow, Adam? I’m exhausted, I need at least three hours of sleep before I can deal with brawling ex-cons,” Harry was saying as he rounded the corner. “Keep ‘em locked in separate rooms until they stop trying to stab each other, alright? Good. Was—oh,” he stopped, finally noticing Louis lurking in his doorway. “I’ve got to go,” he said, then flicked off the comm without waiting for a reply. “Louis? Are you alright?” Harry took a step towards him, and Louis refused to shrink away. He needed to see this, after what he’d just learned. He needed to know the truth, and there wasn’t anyone who could tell him that apart from his own eyes. Harry cast a look down the hallway, then frowned at Louis. “How did you find my room?”

Louis almost laughed. Finding Harry’s room had been the easiest thing he’d done since he took this job. 

“Smells like you,” he answered, pasting on a shy smile.

Harry’s eyebrows jumped on his forehead and he swallowed. Louis tilted his head to the side and frowned slightly—he could've sworn he’d just heard Harry’s heart beat.

“No, yeah, uh. Of course. That makes sense,” he rambled. He really did look exhausted, but still he asked, “Do you need anything? Did Niall not find you a room?”

Louis shook his head. “He did. I just wanted to say thank you.”

Harry paused halfway through rubbing one of his eyes. He looked younger like this, with his hair pulled back into a lazy bun. “For what?”

_ For answering my question. _“For saving me.”

Harry dropped his hand and grinned toothily. “‘S what I do. Big brave rebel captain, you know?”  
  
“A revolution isn’t about saving people, Harry,” Louis said, stepping forwards into Harry’s space. His tail went to curl around Harry’s leg, but Harry moved away. “It’s about setting people free.”

Harry looked like he wanted to argue—Niall was right, his heart was much too big for his boots—but Louis didn’t give him a chance. He ducked past him and walked away.

He rounded the corner just in time for Harry to open his doors and groan at the mess in his quarters. 

_ Achilles Sector. Gregar System. Trinityl IV. Time Code 39190. _

The last few days had been much too loud for Louis’ liking. They hit up a settlement a day, dropping off the escaped prisoners by the hundreds. Louis watched it all from the observation deck, curled in his favourite spot that always seemed to get sunlight whenever they landed.

He ate his meals—a delightful combination of pre-packaged slop and ship-grown vegetables—in the mess hall at whatever hours he pleased, and he avoided everyone, and he carved patterns into the soft metal of his bedpost, and he planned.

Planning wasn’t his best skill, but this job wasn’t like the rest. He didn’t have a ship of his own to rely on when it all fell apart; signing up for the long con meant leaving himself exposed to failure without so much as a safety net. So, he weaved new safety nets. He hacked the escape pods day one, then spent day two exploring all the places he _ shouldn’t _be in the belly of the beast. Her core was magnificent, and watching Liam and his team of scrappy-looking engineers try to make sense of it provided for at least an hour of entertainment before his tail decided it was too cramped in the vent to stay for a single moment more.

He was tempted, after day two, to hijack the entire Orca just to see if he could.

But that wasn’t going to help him get his credits, and he needed those if he was ever to be amongst the stars again, riding free in a ship that actually _ worked. _

So, it was on day three that he finally allowed himself to think about his options.

He wasn’t a fan of any of them.

The people on the docks below were bustling to and fro, and Louis watched as the tell-tale blue of prison uniforms slowly blended into the crowd. If he squinted just right, he could see a very tiny Harry with his very tiny second in command. They looked like they were arguing. He wasted a second trying to isolate their voices in amongst the chaos, but it was no use; all he got for it was a headache. 

He thought he knew what it was about, anyway. All of these settled planets, and not one of them was any use to the crew. The senate had strict laws on who could and could not conduct inter-planetary trade, and selling a single parp to a starship without the proper permit counted as a violation of those laws.

The prisoners were a drain on the ship’s resources; it didn’t matter how quickly they got rid of them, there still wouldn’t be enough to go around pretty soon. Harry needed to restock and refuel, and a big-fuck-off Orca was definitely going to attract some attention if he landed it at any of the inner trade planets—the ones most under the senate’s rotten thumb.

There were a few reasons why he wouldn’t just go to one of the trade planets on that delightful list Louis had acquired that had landed him in more trouble than it was worth; either he didn’t know of any raider-pirate-outlaw (come one, come all!) friendly ports (unlikely), or he simply wasn’t welcome (very likely, especially given the unanswered communications Louis had seen on Harry’s screen).

Louis couldn’t make himself believe that Harry was Captain X—anyone can sign a name, he told himself; it didn’t prove anything—but if word had gotten out that he was, than it made sense that no one with half a brain cell was willing to let him land his ship on their planet. Paying off a senator to turn a blind eye while you bartered with a few outlaws was good for business, but suffering the consequences of aiding a universally famous genocidal maniac was definitely not.

So, Louis knew what Harry needed. Step one of target manipulation; complete. Step two was to present it to the mark without them ever suspecting that you knew they needed it. 

Just as Louis was grumbling to himself about how much he hated step two, he heard footsteps approaching and a jaunty whistled tune. 

Louis tensed but didn’t move, hidden from view in his nook behind a corner and several metres off the ground.

He relaxed when he recognised the person’s scent as belonging to Niall. He debated if he wanted to come out of hiding or not then decided, _ might as well. _

He hopped down in one smooth motion, landing on his feet just as Niall was about to walk past the observation window.

“Fuck!” Niall staggered back. As if on instinct, he threw the protein bar he’d been eating right at Louis’ face. “Mother of cunts—Louis?”

Louis sniffed the bar he’d caught curiously, trying to decide if it would make him sick. 

“Shit, sorry; you gave me a heart attack there, mate. You been lurking up here, then? I thought you jumped ship three planets ago.”

Louis’ only reaction was to take a bite of the protein bar. 

Niall didn’t seem to give a shit. “Hey, the eye’s all healed up!” he said, pointing. 

Louis paused his chewing and stared at Niall. “I hadn’t noticed,” he deadpanned. 

To his surprise, Niall broke into laughter. 

Louis swallowed his bite, watching the man with bemusement.

“Here, you can have your ultra-pressed garbage back,” he said, pressing the half-eaten bar in to Niall’s hand in an effort to calm him down.

Niall wiped a nonexistent tear from his eye, still grinning. “Cheers. Hey, d’you like parties?”

“Depends.”  
  
“Right. Well, the crew’s throwing something together in recreation room C tonight—Liz and her girl should be back any minute with the supplies for it. We’ve got one more stop this afternoon, and then the ship’ll be empty again. That’s cause for celebration if you ask me. I’ve had a-bloody-nough of convicts bending my ear every two minutes about their booboos.”

Louis was about to respond when Niall nodded over his shoulder at the observation window. “That’s them now.”

Louis turned and saw a maintenance shuttle approaching from the west. That explained how Liz was able to score any cargo—with the right attitude (and the right stolen ID numbers), she could easily have passed the vessel off as intra-planetary. 

He tilted his head and squinted at it as it grew larger and larger, and then it was soaring past the window towards the ship’s dock below. 

_ Can’t have got enough to throw more than one party, not with a shuttle that small, _ Louis thought. _ Better make this one count. _

He pivoted on his feet and tucked his hands behind his back. “I’d love to come, but I don’t have anything to wear,” he simpered.

Niall looked like he was about to call his bluff—the clothes Louis currently had on were a bit on the rustic side, but they’d got him through worse scrapes than a low-stakes recroom party—so Louis tucked his ears against his hair and hunched his shoulders.

“Aw, no, love, it’s—don’t worry about it. I’ll lend you some if you promise not to scare me like that again.” 

Louis made no such promise.

_Achilles Sector. Border of Gregar System and Section R. Time Code: 40099._

Recreation Room C was filling up with crewmembers by the time Niall and Louis arrived. 

Louis had found himself spending the afternoon with Niall after he had leant him an outfit from a neatly folded stack under the desk in his quarters—quarters (and clothes, for that matter) that smelled distinctly of Zayn.

Louis had been prepared to take the clothes and leave, but Niall had offered to give him a tour of the ship’s facilities.

“Since you’re going to be hanging around, hiding in corners and whatnot,” he said, “you might as well know where everything is.”

Louis didn’t have the heart (or the stupidity) to tell him that he’d already helped himself to the ship’s floor plan, so he said yes.

To his surprise, an afternoon in Niall’s company wasn’t actually terrible. Louis had never really gotten along with humans, and that was putting it generously. And yet. It wasn’t terrible.

The Zayn-smell had just begun to fade from his borrowed clothes when he stepped into the rec room, and then it was back in full force as the man himself appeared next to Niall to greet him warmly.

“Louis?” he asked as soon as he noticed him standing there.

“He’s still here and he’s been very good about not biting my bits off all afternoon,” Niall boasted, swinging an arm around Louis’ shoulders.  
  
Louis scowled and shoved him off, but Niall just laughed.

“Huh,” Zayn said, studying him.

“You’re not getting your clothes back,” Louis said, just in case he was getting any ideas.

“Yeah, sorry about that, love.” Niall smiled at Zayn sheepishly. “He blasted a hole through the pants for his tail before I could stop him.”

Louis made no apologies.

Zayn took a long drink from his cup, then gestured to the rest of the room. “Well, you might as well help yourself to some food and drink as well, then,” he said airily.

Louis eyed the spread. The ship-grown vegetables had been roasted and salted, presented on a platter next to some pre-packaged stew and fresh bread and cheese. There was also a collection of glass cylinders clustered in the corner of the table filled to the brim with different coloured liquids.

Louis helped himself to some vegetables and stew, then sniffed at the liquids and made a face.

They smelt like blaster-cleaner and burnt honey.  
  
Liz appeared on the other side of the table. “You’d better enjoy those, kitten.” She smiled sharply. “I bartered my ass off to get them.”

Louis looked her up and down. “So you didn’t barter very much, then,” he purred.

Her jaw dropped in shock. Once she’d recovered, she called over her shoulder, “Captain! Come collect this one, he’s hurting the feelings I don’t have.”

Harry looked up from across the room. He was standing with Liam, Zayn, and Niall. They were clumped around a holographic games table, arguing amongst themselves about how to set it up properly.

“Louis!” Harry waved him over, a wide smile gracing his face. 

Louis sent one last look to Liz and stole a cylinder from the table under her watchful eye. As he walked away from her, he heard her laugh to herself under her breath.

“Do you like games?”

Louis looked up at Harry in surprise. He looked comfortable, but put together—his hair was pulled half out of his face, and there was a dusting of soft-looking stubble on his upper lip. In the times Louis had seen him walking around on this ship the past few days, he’d been wearing a navy blue jacket over his simple white shirt and high-waisted trousers. He’d ditched the jacket for a festive, retro overshirt with a garishly loud pattern.

“Sure,” Louis answered. He took a swig from the cylinder.

Harry grinned. He reached out deliberately slowly and plucked the drink from Louis’ hand so he could replace it with a handful of darts. 

“Bet you can’t beat me,” he teased, walking backwards towards a shiny new dartboard on the wall.

_ Oh, sweet baby, you don’t know what you’re talking about. _Louis tested the weight of the darts in his hand; he was sorely tempted to blow his cover by throwing five straight bullseyes. 

Harry stumbled on his feet then laughed at himself, some of the liquid in the cylinder sloshing over the sides and onto the smooth metal floor.

“Clumsy?” Louis asked, trailing after him.

“I might’ve had a few already,” Harry answered. He bent his head down to lick the alcohol off his hand. 

Louis rolled his eyes while Harry wasn’t looking. He pressed his untouched plate of food into the hands of a random passing crewmember then tugged the glass out of Harry’s hand gently.

Harry didn’t seem to notice.

“Have you played this before?” he asked, straightening back up and waving his darts in Louis’ face.

Louis tried not to be insulted. He took a fortifying gulp of booze then smiled at Harry in that meek-baby-doe way that seemed to make him lose his breath.

“No?”

Harry stared at him. “Oh, um,” he stumbled. “You just have to throw a dart at the board. ‘S pretty simple, actually.”  
  
Louis was tempted to throw a dart right at his face.

“Like this?” he asked. He put the glass down, took aim, and threw.

Harry gaped at the dart board then cheered.   
  
“I knew you’d be ace at this,” he grinned, gesturing towards the perfect bullseye.

Louis shrugged, tugging at the neck of his borrowed shirt. He hadn’t meant to do that; he’d had every intention of hitting the very edge of the board. But some instinct had taken control of him the second he tried—a very familiar ringing in his ears, one that normally stayed buried.

He giggled awkwardly. “Probably just a fluke or summat,” he said, then frowned. His speech sounded slurred to his ears. He blinked a few times, suddenly noticing how unsteady he felt on his feet. “I think I’m—” he burped. “Tipsy?”

Harry nodded vigorously. He looked around conspiratorially, then whispered loudly, “Me, too.”

Louis giggled. He grabbed onto Harry’s shoulders for support. “What was in that drink?” he asked, still laughing. 

Harry’s brow creased. 

Louis reached up and pressed a finger into the wrinkle between his brows until it smoothed out.

“Dunno,” Harry said. “Your finger is cold.”

“That’s weird,” Louis answered. “I feel really warm.”

“Huh.”  
  
Louis closed his eyes, trying to regain some semblance of control over himself. It was a losing battle. “I’ve never been drunk before,” he found himself admitting.

Harry had pulled away to take his turn throwing a dart. It landed with a thunk right on the edge of the board as he turned to Louis in shock. 

Louis nodded. Just because he hadn’t meant to say that didn’t mean he couldn’t still use it to his advantage.

_ I’m here for a reason, _ he told himself firmly. _ It’s very imp–portant. _

“My owner wouldn’t let me have any.”

He turned and threw another dart at the board, giving Harry time to react to that. It was another bullseye; the dart embedded itself at a beside his last, and both of them wobbled a little from the impact.

“You…” Harry reached for his arm but didn’t make contact. “You had an owner?”

“Of course,” Louis said. He looked back at Harry. He could tell, in some part of his brain, that he was doing a terrible job at lying. It was a good thing Harry was far too out of it to be able to tell the difference. “She was too important to make any time for me, you know what I mean? So I was by myself most of the time.”

Harry made a mournful sound, like being by oneself was the worst thing he could imagine. 

Louis found that funny, so he laughed.

“What?” Harry asked grumpily. “That’s horrible.”

Louis threw another dart at the board despite the fact that Harry hadn’t taken his turn yet. It slammed right into his first dart, and the both of them went tumbling to the floor.  
  
“I’m not there anymore, though, am I?” Louis answered, a dark edge to his voice. 

It was too close to something that could be called _ the truth. _

“Still,” Harry said, retreating back into himself. “We take that kind of thing with us when we leave.”

Louis sent him a searching look. “How would you know?” he challenged. “Did you have an owner?” 

Harry opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. 

At the other end of the rec room, someone had started playing music. It wasn’t quite loud enough to send Louis into a overstimulation spiral, but it was damn near close, especially with the alcohol in his bloodstream, exposing him like a live wire.

Harry noticed the effect it seemed to be having on Louis. “Do you want to get out of here?” he asked, crowding closer like his body could absorb the sound.

Louis didn’t answer. He just grabbed Harry’s arm and pulled him along as he sped out of the room.

Harry went willingly enough, only stopping to grab a package of water from the table. 

“Where are we going?” he asked once they were out into the hallway.

“I’ve got to do everything, do I?” Louis muttered under his breath.

Harry guffawed. In the bright white light of the hallway, it struck Louis as strange. He hadn’t known Harry Styles very long—and most of what he knew came from a hardly comprehensive thumb drive—but he hadn’t seen him laugh like this before. He looked carefree, like he wasn’t the Captain of a doomed ship and an even-more-doomed revolution. It was a far cry from genocidal maniac, and the remainder of Louis’ hesitance fell away.

_ It’s not him, _he thought, managing to pierce through the fog in his brain. 

“Race you to the observation deck?” Harry grinned, alight with childlike joy.

_ There’s no way it’s him. _

“You’re on,” Louis growled. He turned and took off down the hall, snatches of route possibilities floating in and out of his mind.   
  
He turned left, then right. He climbed through an emergency hatch to the floor above, kicked open the door to a spare room, and crawled into the laundry tunnel. 

By the time Harry met him at the observation deck, out of breath and pouting at having lost, Louis had managed to smoke and then dispose of an entire cigarette.

“How’d you beat me here?” Harry asked, collapsing into the seat next to Louis.

Louis turned to him, hands folded behind his head and ankles crossed over each other lazily. “Just lucky, I guess,” he purred, fluttering his eyelashes. 

Harry pointed at him. “It’s not fair when you do that.”

Louis pulled on his very best, _ who, me? _face.

Harry’s expression went on a bit of a journey. At first, he seemed constipated. Then, he looked frustrated and a little bit suspicious. That only lasted a moment before it melted away into contrition.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything,” he mumbled, offering the slightly-squashed water package in his hand. “It’s not your problem.”

Louis wanted to ask what he meant by that, but he took the water instead. 

It was unpleasantly warm, but it helped clear his head.

“Are you still feeling tipsy?” Louis asked, because at this point he couldn’t even tell.

Harry shook his head with a soft smile. “Not really.”

“Me neither.”

Harry nodded.

There was an interlude of silence as they both watched the stars move slowly in the distance. Louis found it easier to think of travel as everything else moving around him, twisting and turning and taking on new shapes—especially in his line of work. He hadn’t been in one place for more than a few thousands time units since he was young. It made him feel less like a coward, always running and running.

“So, your owner,” Harry said. His voice broke the silence like a tap to a sleeping screen. “Who was she?” Harry let his question sit in the air for a moment, then added softly, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” 

If Louis had been the hybrid he was pretending to be, he might’ve wondered what Harry was planning on doing with that information.

“Her name was Stevie,” Louis answered. He folded in on himself, bringing his legs up to cross on the soft cushion, tail curling around his calf. “Stevie Nicks.”

Harry’s breath caught. He sounded calm when he spoke, but Louis knew better. “Did she live on Stradeus AG8, by any chance?”

Louis looked up, eyes wide. “You’ve heard of her?” 

Harry could so easily have lied. As far as he knew, Louis had no idea of the ship’s resource scarcity; no idea of the depth of the trouble Harry was in.

Hell, Harry might’ve even thought Louis wouldn’t know about Stevie’s business—warlord heiress in control of half a C-class planet, running the largest criminal spaceport this side of the galaxy.

There were any number of explanations Harry could have used. 

So, Louis was surprised when Harry said, “I have. She’s someone I’ve been trying to get in contact with, actually. The Stradeus spaceport is our best chance of survival.”

Louis scooted closer to Harry on the bench until their thighs were pressing together.

“What do you mean?” 

Harry sighed, a dark cloud passing over his face. Carefree didn’t seem to last very long with him. “I’ll tell you, but I don’t want you to worry, alright? You’re going to be fine,” he said, eyes fierce. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“I won’t.” Louis gulped. “I promise.” 

Harry nodded, looking back out at the stars. “I did something,” he said, and the words sounded like they’d been ripped out of his throat. He cleared it, then started again. “I did something, years ago. Something terrible.”

Louis froze, ears pricked up. He felt a familiar dread awaken in his ribcage, unfurling from it’s nap. “What was it, Harry?”

Harry shook his head. “Something I can’t take back.”

Louis wanted to run—not pretend like the universe was moving around him, just _ run. _

“It means that no one will trade with me or my crew,” Harry continued. Louis was only half listening over the sound of the blood rushing to his head. “We’ve scraped by these past couple of years, starting fires for the senate to put out. That’s how I found you.” Harry nudged their thighs together, and Louis’ skin burned through his trousers. “But this ship…” he trailed off.

“It was a mistake to take her,” he said, as if he’d only just come to that realisation. “I just saw her there, she’s—you’ve seen her, she’s ridiculous. And I got so angry thinking about the damage they could do with her: more colonies on more planets, expanding into places we’re not meant to be. Do you—does that make sense to you, Louis?”

He captured Louis’ eyes with glittering, urgent need; it was as if Louis’ answer was the most important thing Harry could hear in that moment. 

Louis didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded.

Harry’s shoulders relaxed, and he laughed at himself. “It’s a mess,” he admitted. “I’m a fucking mess.” Harry looked down at his lap, then at Louis’ leg against his. He dared to let his fingers reach across achingly slowly across his own and let his knuckles meet Louis’ thigh.

Louis realised Harry had been lying about not feeling tipsy anymore. That had to be it. 

“Do you want to know a secret?” he asked. 

_ Not particularly, _ Louis thought from the corner of his mind still capable of humour at a time like this.

Harry didn’t wait for an answer. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he whispered with maniacal glee. “I’ve got no fucking clue.”

Louis found himself getting angry.

“How can that be, Harry?” he asked, trying not to let on the depths of his emotions.

If Louis’d been a killing man, he could’ve stabbed him.

And if he’d been a stupider man, he could’ve kissed him. (And why not, when his lips were right there and so pink in the silver light of the stars and he was looking at Louis like _ that). _

And if he’d been a man at all, none of this would’ve been happening. 

“Haven’t you ever started something without knowing how it’s going to end?” Harry asked. He didn’t sound offended, and the manic edge to his voice was gone. Now, he just sounded exhausted. “That probably sounds silly to you.” Harry shifted back, cold air meeting Louis’ side. 

Louis just stared at him.

Harry looked down at his lap again and fiddled with the ring on his finger. It was a small golden band with a green pendant embedded in the shape of a crescent moon. He turned it round and round as a curl escaped from his bun and fell into his face. “Do you ever hate us for what we’ve done to you?” 

The question was almost incomprehensible, given what Harry had admitted to, and he choked on a laugh. 

“Yes,” he bit out, “all the time.”

Harry nodded as if he’d been expecting that answer.

“I’m sorry,” he said. 

The ring went around and around.

“Why are you sorry, Harry?” Louis pressed. He needed to hear him say it.

Harry just shook his head again. “You said she was nice to you?” he asked, looking up at Louis again. His eyes were wet with unshed ears. “Stevie?”

_ Why does he have to make this so confusing, _Louis thought. He’d never missed the quiet solitude of his starskipper more. 

“Yeah,” Louis forced himself to say. “She freed me, but I could go back if I wanted to.”

Harry took a deep breath and tucked the curl behind his ear. “I’m sorry to have to ask this of you, but. Do you think you could take me to her?”

The victory was upsettingly hollow. Step two was the hardest part, but he couldn't even bask in the glow of having pulled it off.

“In this?” Louis asked, gesturing to their surroundings and wrinkling his nose.

Harry huffed a laugh. “No,” he said. “It’ll have to be in one of the shuttles. And I don’t want my crew to know about it, do you think you could keep this between us?” 

_ It just keeps getting better and better, _ Louis thought. _ He might as well walk straight into a senate cell with his hands in the air. _

“Of course,” he answered. “Whatever you need.”  
  
Harry’s face did something strange when Louis said that. “Thank you, Louis.”

Louis didn’t respond. 

Harry stood on two shaky feet and wished him a soft goodnight. He lingered for just a moment, and then he was gone.

Louis spent the rest of the night chain smoking and staring out at the moving stars.

_Achilles Sector. Section R. Time Code: 42026._

Louis was twelve years old. He was standing in the shooting range and shaking. His ears were protected under a pair of thick mufflers, but the noise of the gun going off was still overwhelming.

They wouldn’t let him have a blaster yet; he hadn’t earned it. His arms ached as he lifted the old-fashioned pistol and aimed it at the target.

“Concentrate, 2-3!” his handler snapped. Louis jumped, and the shaking got worse. 

She stomped over to him and flipped her screen around, showing him his progress.

“You’re better than this. You’re not even trying.”  
  
Louis closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. 

The gun went _ bang _and his heart pounded in his chest. 

He opened his eyes one by one.

He’d missed the target again.

Part of him felt smug, as it always did when he rebelled.

But then his handler reached up and snatched the mufflers from his head.

Louis ached to grab them back, but he didn’t dare move.

“You want these back?” she asked. “These are for good kittens who do as they’re told.”

Louis ducked his head down. The handler sighed.

“Come on, 2-3.” She crouched down to pat him on the shoulder. “You know I have to do this. It’s for you own good.”

Louis didn’t argue. 

He raised the gun again and took aim at the target. The colours of it started to blur together through a curtain of unshed tears. 

He squeezed the trigger. The gun went _ BANG!, _his heart pounded in his chest, and he felt a drop of blood hit the side of his face.

All he could hear was ringing.

The handler said something to him, lips curled up into a smile.

Louis wiped the blood off his face and looked back at the target. There was a person standing there with a hole through the centre of his chest. 

His features were blurry but familiar. The gaping wound didn’t bleed, not like Louis’ burst eardrums. 

Louis blinked, and he realised the man was Harry. 

He curled his lip is disgust and wrenched his eyes open.

_ Oh, fuck you, _ he thought, pushing himself upright. _ Fuck you very much. _

That wasn’t a memory his dreams usually subjected him to. It seemed his subconscious was branching out from his usual revolving door of nightmares.

Louis sat down at his desk and tapped on the screen of his device. 

He’d gotten about three hours of sleep (compared to the hybrid-recommended ten), but he was awake enough to reply to the only unanswered message in his inbox.

It was from Molly. All it said was, _ status update. _

Louis replied, _ Target acquired. Rendezvous at time code 44565, same place as last time. _

He paused for a moment, then added, _ Additional 5000 credits required. _

Molly was apparently in between meetings, because she got back to him before he could even close the window. _ Payment has already been agreed upon. _

_ Darling, _ Louis sent back, _ we both know who’s getting screwed over on this job. Additional 5000 credits required. _

She didn’t argue.

Louis wiped the messages from his device, then rebooted the system to be sure. 

After that, he was out of his room and stalking down the hall.

Sick bay was far less populated today than the last time he’d been in. He surveyed the occupants of the room—Zayn and Niall—through the glass on the door. 

“Babe, I’m not saying—” Zayn huffed.

“Really? Sure sounds like you are.” Niall didn’t look up from where he was restocking a group of emergency first aid kits.

Zayn sighed, leaning backwards against the bench. “I should have known better,” he said dryly.

Niall shot him a look from the corner of his eye. “What?”  
  
Zayn smiled fondly. “Than to get between you and a friend. You always bond fast, don’t you, Doctor Horan?”  
  
Niall’s agitation melted away. He angled his body towards Zayn, and his expression mirrored his partner’s. “I hope you don’t still see it as a character flaw, Mr Malik.”

Zayn shook his head. “No, babes. It’s just…” he trailed off, fiddling with a length of gauze until Niall batted it out of his hands. “You don’t know how stubborn he can be, and he’s got his sights set on the little one. And, oi.”

“Oh, I don’t know how stubborn he can be?” Niall challenged. 

Louis pressed the button next to the door, and the _ whoosh _of it sliding opened stopped Zayn before he could answer. 

“Oh, sorry, uh,” Louis stuttered, taking an alarmed step backwards. “Am I interrupting?”

Niall grinned at him, posture relaxing. “Not at all, Louis. The ol’ ball and chain and I were just discussing what to have for dinner.”  
  
Zayn nodded, face a blank mask. 

“Right,” Louis said slowly. “Well, I was just wondering if there’s supposed to be anyone on the bridge right now?”

Niall and Zayn stared at him with wide eyes. 

“It’s just, I went up there to find Harry, and no one was there?”

Niall and Zayn burst into motion. Niall was swearing up a storm as the both of them sped past him and down the hall towards the bridge access lift. 

Louis watched them go long enough to make sure they were out of sight, then ducked around the door and let it close behind him.

It only took him a minute to find what he was looking for. He pulled the small bottle from the very back of the shelf, shifting the supply around to make the theft less obvious. 

He held the clear liquid up to the light, face impassive. 

It went in his pocket, along with an intravenous applicator.

He closed the sickbay doors behind him, then his eyes as he stretched his hearing up towards the bridge. He smiled. It sounded like Niall and Zayn had freed the young woman who’d been left in charge of the navigation station from a strange malfunction that had kept her locked in the bathroom and away from her post.

_ How lucky, _ they were saying, _ that no one got hurt. _

_Edge of the Achilles Sector, Approaching Sector 5-2. Time Code: 42727._

It took Harry until that evening to find Louis in his quarters. 

The knock on Louis’ door came as no surprise—he’d smelled him a mile off—but Louis still found his voice shaking as he called, _ “ _Come in!”

The door snicked open, and there was Harry. 

His hair was loose around his shoulders. His clothes were the same as always, down to the navy blue coat around his shoulders and the scuffed boots on his pigeon-toed feet. His face was freshly shaved and his expression sombre.

The man Louis had seen just yesterday, smiling and scruffy-cheeked and happy, seemed lightyears away. 

“Hello, Louis,” he said. “D’you remember what we talked about last night?”  
  
“Which part?” Louis asked, rising to a stand. 

Harry smiled for just a second before it was gone. “The part where I asked you to take me somewhere?” 

Louis frowned. “You want to go now?”

He’d been expecting this, but Harry wasn’t to know that.

“Yes, please,” he answered, achingly polite and upsettingly sincere.

Louis shrugged on his jacket, tapping his pockets down. Everything was still there—his communication device, his blaster, the applicator—but it never hurt to be sure.

“If that’s what you want,” Louis answered. “Are we…?”

Harry stepped aside as Louis met him in the hall. Louis’ ear flicked as the door closed behind him—goodbye, sweet quarters. “We’re taking a shuttlecraft. Don’t worry,” he soothed, mistaking Louis’ expression for concern, “I’m a good pilot. You won’t even have to do anything, really. Just make contact with her so we’re not blown out of the sky?”

Louis smiled nervously. “Sure, I, um. I can do that for you.”

Harry stepped close—too close—and wrapped his hand around Louis’ elbow. His grip was firm but not tight, and Louis had to resist the urge to break his wrist. “Thank you, Louis,” he said. 

Louis didn’t reply, and Harry released him after another beat. 

“Follow me, alright?” 

Louis nodded and did as he was asked. 

  
  


“You been in one of these before?” Harry was asking.

Louis wasn’t paying attention. He was too busy watching Harry work, his arms stretching this way and that as he flipped switches and turned dials and tapped commands into various screens in the cockpit. Louis thought of himself as a bit of a piloting prodigy, but the natural way Harry moved, the way he was sitting in the pilot’s chair like it was an extension of himself, made Louis think he might have some competition in that area.

“Uh, a few times,” Louis answered, looking around the cramped space. “Never one this size, though.”  
  
_ They were much, much smaller, _his thoughts added.

Harry sent him a sheepish smile. “Yeah, sorry about that, but I didn’t want to risk the Orca before I knew we’d be welcome. And,” he huffed a laugh, then leaned towards Louis as if to share a secret, “the rest of the crew wouldn’t exactly approve of this.”  
  
_ Bit too dangerous for their tastes, _Louis assumed. Then again, from what Louis had seen of Harry’s crew he couldn’t rule anything out. They all shared a certain reckless twinkle in their eyes. 

“Why?” Louis asked, wiggling around to get comfortable in his seat. 

Harry hummed, busy getting the engines ready to launch. The airlock in front of them whooshed open, and suddenly Louis could see stars and a few far off planets. 

“No reason,” Harry soothed. 

The engine roared to life beneath them, and Harry grinned a familiar grin. 

“That’s right, darling,” he said under his breath, one hand on the steering controls and the other on the propulsion. “You ready, Louis?”  
  
“Oh, the ship gets to be ‘darling’ but I don’t?” Louis sniffed.  
  
Harry’s grin widened. “You can be whatever you want,” he answered. With a twist of his fingers, the shuttle shot forwards, through the protective forcefield and out into open space. “Darling.”

Louis wrinkled his nose and looked away. The readouts in front of him looked good—not very high on fuel, but there was certainly enough to get them where they were going. Not that Harry knew that, just yet. 

Louis reached into his jacket. He lifted his leg onto the seat to keep his hands from Harry’s view as he pulled the intravenous applicator out and loaded the liquid into it. 

“So when would you like me to make contact?” he asked as he worked. 

Harry looked up from the screens, then back down again. He shrugged in a way that seemed oddly nervous. “I suppose now is as good a time as—”

Harry stopped. His fingers were frozen over the screens. 

He stared at Louis with two wide, green eyes.

There was a needle sticking into his thigh feeding a fast-acting tranquiliser right into his veins.

Louis met Harry’s eyes. He used his free hand to push on Harry’s chest, settling him back against his chair. 

“Wha–” Harry slurred. His hand reached up to cover Louis’ on his thigh, but his grip was too slack to pull the applicator out.

“Shhh,” Louis said. “Don’t fight it, _ darling.” _

Harry closed his eyes and slumped backwards. 

Louis sighed, throwing the needle somewhere behind him and ignoring the sharp whiff of blood that came with it. He leant his foot against the bottom of Harry’s chair then nudged it as far backwards as the cockpit allowed. 

“That was easy,” Louis said, moving to stand in front of the controls. A red light flashed in his periphery, and Louis turned his head in alarm. “Maybe not,” he mumbled, eyes narrowing as he read the stream of information that followed the warning. “Engine overheating? Are you fucking _ serious?” _

Louis dove forwards, hands working fast on the console. Apparently a coolant valve had ruptured in the left engine, leading to a shuttle-wide failure in the cooling systems. It had to have happened the minute they left the Orca, if not before that. Why hadn’t Harry done a routine maintenance check of engine operations?

_ Right, _ Louis though, glancing over his shoulder at Harry’s slack face. _ Because he’s an idiot who didn’t want to get caught. _

“Don’t look at me like that, Harry,” Louis warned, turning back to the console. “This is your fucking fault. And I can’t even signal the Orca for help because you’re unconscious. Thanks,” he huffed. 

After another minute of desperately searching through the shuttlecraft’s emergency repair capabilities, Louis had to call it. He turned his attention to the short-range scanner, because if they _ had _to fall out of the sky they might as well do it on a habitable planet. 

“There!” Louis cheered, zeroing in on a small planet not too far away from their coordinates. It had been terraformed at some point in the past, judging by the atmosphere and flora, but it didn’t seem like it had been colonised. That happened a lot in these outer rim areas; corporations get halfway through establishing a colony before they run out of money. Louis growled at the prospect of it—sure, he’d be able to breathe, but what was the point of that if he couldn’t get his engine fixed?—but another sweep of the scanner didn’t reveal any other options. 

They were too far away from the Stradeus port to make it in time, and there weren’t any other habitable planets in the area. 

Louis cursed himself as his fingers flew over the navigation screen, setting the new course. If he hadn’t been so undisciplined over the course of this mission, he would have studied the area already. He would have a backup plan, then a backup plan for his backup plan.

Instead, he had a head full of useless, messy feelings, a drugged up rebel captain (with whom Louis’ cover was now blown, _ shit _) and an overheating bucket of bolts. 

_ At least the view’s nice, _Louis thought as the shuttlecraft approached the planet. It was luscious and green; a rarity, in Louis’ experience. 

The ship shuddered violently, and Louis was sent sprawling backwards onto Harry’s lap.

“Bugger,” Louis said, tapping on the read out screen beside his head. 

The heat of entry into the planet’s atmosphere was starting to affect the already-dangerously hot engines, leading to a massive power failure.   
  
As if on cue, the overhead lights started to flicker.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Louis said, shooting back to his feet. “I am _ not _ dying today.”  
  
He vented the emergency oxygen, which gave them enough of a boost to keep them in the air for a little longer. His eyes searched out the viewing window, trying to find the safest place to put them down. 

There! A clearing a few hundred feet off. Louis transferred the steering to manual, then yanked the stick almost full off. The shuttle tilted and Harry flopped around on his seat behind Louis. 

“Almost there, almost there.” The tops of the highest trees started to graze the underside of the shuttle. Louis heard scraping and tearing, and the shuddering in the cockpit increased. 

Louis could see the clearing now; it was almost below them. He acted on instinct and cut the engines. 

The shuttle dropped the rest of the way—twenty feet down and onto a bed of grass and rocks. 

Louis bounced off the ceiling and landed in an awkward sprawl across the dashboard. 

“Ow,” he said, lifting his head to check on Harry.   
  
The fucker had his seatbelt on. 

Louis groaned and peeled himself off the screens. They all blinked at him angrily—lots more red little warning lights had joined the first—and Louis flipped them off, fumbling in his jacket for a cigarette. 

His fingers shook as he lifted one up to his mouth and held it between his lips. He pulled out his lighter next, but a noise interrupted him before he could light it. 

It was a groan. 

Louis looked up to see Harry starting to wake. 

_ Fuck, _ he thought. _ Fuck. _

“L–Louis?” he slurred, blinking at him deliriously. His gaze slurred around the room, taking in the flashing red lights and the manual steering rod that Louis may or may not have ripped clean off the console and the view through the window—green grass, trees, swampland, and some unfriendly looking clouds in the distance. “What…”

Louis thumb flicked down and his lighter spurted to life. He’d only just touched the flame to the end of his cigarette when the automatic sprinklers activated and he found himself suddenly drenched in water.

Harry was still staring at him with slow-growing clarity.

“Fuck you,” Louis growled. He ripped the cigarette from his mouth and threw it at Harry’s face. It bounced uselessly off his cheek. The sprinklers were still going, and Louis’ ears were _ not _ liking how drenched they were. “Fuck this entire sodding shit of a job!”

With that, Louis punched the emergency side exit open and leapt from the shuttle. 

He kept swearing to himself as he marched away into the treeline.

Harry didn’t try to stop him.

_ Terraforming Project T231-B. Property of NeviCore™. All rights reserved. Sector 5-2. Time Code: it's dark. _

When Louis wondered back towards the shuttle, the sun had long since set. 

He paused on the edge of the clearing, taking in the scene before him.

Harry had clearly been busy while Louis was gone; he’d organised a ring of rocks into a circle with an impressive fire raging inside. He sat with his back to Louis, warming his hands over the flames. His hair was pulled up in a bun, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and the boots on his feet were covered in dirt. Louis leant against a tree and closed his eyes. 

A breath of the cool night air tinged with smoke and Harry’s scent did nothing to settle his nerves.

He steeled himself and walked forwards.

Harry’s shoulders jumped when he heard a branch crack behind him, but he didn’t turn around.

Louis cleared his throat. 

“Here,” he said, holding out the prize in his grip.

Harry looked up finally and his eyes fixed on the dead fish right beside his head.

“Oh,” he said. “Um. No, thank you,” he said. His words and posture were both stiff.

Louis sighed and crossed to the other side of the fire pit. He picked up a likely looking stick from the ground and skewered the fish with more confidence than his expertise accounted for. 

It wasn’t often he found himself outside the reaches of civilisation, after all. Normally there was at least a house to rob, but Louis’ trek around the surrounding area had revealed no such thing. He hadn’t expected anything different, but. It still would have been nice.

Maybe one thing could go right today.

Louis sat himself down on a rock and held the fish over the fire.

Harry’s eyes flicked up to watch him.

The silence was beginning to set Louis’ hairs on end. When he’d magnanimously chosen to return to the ship (which was, admittedly, his only way of escape from this bloody planet since none of the transmissions from his emergency communicator were making it through the upper atmosphere), he’d been expecting at least one question.

Probably more.  
  
And possibly yelling, and throwing things, and a blaster aimed at his chest.

But Harry wasn’t doing any of that.  
  
He was just sitting there.

And when he opened his mouth, it was only to say, “The left engine is busted. Coolant leak. Probably take me a few days to fix, maybe more, given…” he gestured to their surroundings.

Louis rotated his skewered fish. It was starting to smell somewhat appetising, which was a miracle. “You’re awfully calm for someone who’s just survived an attempted kidnapping,” Louis said. 

Harry snorted. The sound was disbelieving and a little angry. “Wasn’t the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. I thought I’d gotten used to it, but.” Harry crossed his arms and scowled at the flames. “Guess the universe can still surprise me. Just when you think things can’t get worse, huh?”  
  
Louis watched the head of his fish burn. 

“Just…tell me one thing, okay? And then I want you to leave me the fuck alone.”

Louis gulped. He felt his ears press against the side of his head dejectedly, although what he had to feel offended about he wasn’t sure. 

“Fine,” Louis snapped. “But you have to answer something for me, too.” 

Louis pulled his fish out of the flames, then dropped it on the stone beside him. 

He wasn’t hungry anymore.

Harry’s hands curled around his arms, knuckles going white. His eyes looked empty through the screen of smoke that separated them.

He nodded once and set his jaw. “Did my father send you?” 

It gave Louis pause. Something in Harry’s face settled; it was as if he didn’t need to hear Louis say, “No,” to know his answer.

His shoulders relaxed marginally, and exhaustion overtook his features. 

Louis felt a pang of guilt—the hangover from the tranq Louis had given him probably wasn’t pretty—but he buried the emotion before it could take root. 

Instead, he focused on his hatred. 

“Why did you kill them?” he asked—no, spat. “The growing facility on Hera 3? Why–” Louis’ voice broke, and he pushed himself to his feet. “Why did you kill them, Harry?”

Harry looked up at him. Louis watched as his face broke open, one piece at a time. His eyebrow quirked, and he pulled his lip between him teeth, and the emptiness in his eyes was washed away by a horrible kind of understanding. 

He stood shakily and regarded Louis as if with new eyes.

“That’s not—that’s not why I’m here, but. Fuck, Harry. Answer the bloody question.” 

Harry opened his mouth to say something, but no noise came out.

“Answer me, Harry. Why did they have to die? For what, for your bullshit revolution?” Louis’ voice grew in pitch, shouts growing louder and louder. What did it matter anyway; there was no one around to hear them. “Just fucking—just tell me why you killed them!”

Harry didn’t meet Louis’ anger. Louis almost wished he would, so he’d have an excuse to put a blaster hole through his thigh and not feel bad about it.

Harry just stood there.   
  
And then, he stepped away. 

He shook his head slowly. When he spoke, it was in a voice Louis hadn’t heard from him before. 

“I didn’t.”

Louis stared at him, eyes unblinking until the smoke became too painful to ignore.

The moment Harry was released from his gaze, he stalked over to the shuttle and disappeared inside. 

Louis was left with a fire, an overcooked river fish, and the certainty that in one single day he’d made some of the worst mistakes of his life.

_Everything Looks Better In the Morning. Time Code: Night. Day. Afternoon._

Louis slept outside that night, just him and his jacket huddled against the shuttle engine—the small amount of reserve power the engine was still generating made for a warm back, so it could have been worse.

The next day, Louis was already sticking his head out of the left engine by the time Harry stumbled out, misty-breathed and bleary eyed.

Harry stared at him, as if surprised that Louis was still here. After a few moments of that, he shook his head and wandered off into the trees.

It took Louis the rest of the day to diagnose all the problems in the engine, and then the half the next to rank them in terms of most urgent to least.

He respected Harry’s wish to be left alone, but he can’t help but watch him from a distance from time to time.

He would stumble back towards camp with an armful of root vegetables, or berries, or grains. Sometimes he’d have weeds sticking out of his hair in a haphazard, almost decorative way.  
  
Sometimes he’d smell clean, and other times he smelt so earthy Louis almost couldn’t recognise him.  
  
But he still didn’t say a word.

The sun was starting to lower in the sky on the third day by the time Louis was ready to actually _ do _something instead of just stand around and scribble engine schematics on scrap pieces of paper. 

He’d tried his best to avoid this solution, but it had become clear that their best option was to botch together a spare part for the engine from iron. There was only so much re-routing he could do before he fucked things up too badly for the hunk of metal to ever fly.  
  
So, he’d got the scanner online then calibrated it to search for minerals close enough to the surface to reach. With the grace of a god he didn’t believe in, he’d found an iron deposit a few kilometres south. He transferred the coordinates to his device—he compass feature required very little power, thankfully—and now he was off.

“Where are you going?”  
  
Louis paused. He didn’t expect Harry to ask, or to notice at all. He turned.

“We need a new part for the engine,” he explained.

Harry crossed his arms petulantly. “I know.”

Louis almost laughed, but didn’t. “Well, there’s an iron deposit an hour’s walk or so this way,” he nods.

Harry turned and swung into the shuttle, and Louis assumed that was the end of the conversation. But then Harry reappeared a moment later with boots on (laces hanging loose, the idiot) and the emergency repair tool. “We’ll need this,” he said, waving the hammer attachment. 

Louis should've thought of that.

Somehow, finding an iron deposit buried a metre down and digging out a large chunk was the easiest part of that afternoon. The hard part was the silence.

On the way back, Harry fell behind, distracted by a plant in the distance, and by the time Louis turned he’d lost him to the trees. Louis could have tracked him by scent, but he just went back to the shuttle, tail between his legs. He spent hours trying to turn their hunk of raw iron into something usable, but the sun had long since set and Louis wasn’t very good at keeping the fire alive.

Harry returned eventually, coat folded up in his arms like a makeshift bag. Louis could smell the now-familiar scent of nuts, fruits, and root vegetables. Harry sat opposite him and deposited his bundle on the ground. Within a minute, he nursed the fire back to life.

Louis tucked his hands into his armpits and stared at the flames.

There was a hand on his arm, just for a moment.  
  
He looked up to see Harry standing before him. He blinked, unsure how much time had passed. Harry wordlessly offered him a bowl of stew.

Louis took it gratefully—he hadn’t eaten anything except emergency rations from the shuttle since before the crash—but he wanted to go further. He itched to push his luck; to say, “This is a mental way of treating someone you asked to leave you the fuck alone, mate,” but he didn’t.

Harry left him after dinner, shutting the shuttle doors between them once more. Louis stared up at the sky with a wince. The hair on his ears his was standing on end from an electrical charge, and the ominous clouds that at once point seemed so far in the distance were now directly overhead.

When the rain started pouring down, Louis let himself have a little tantrum. Just a small one. He kicked a rock and swore at the sky, then at himself for good measure.

The fight left him, then, and he tried to huddle beside the shuttle and the raindrops started falling meaner and stronger, but it was no use; within a minute, he was soaked to the bone. His tail curled up in his lap and his ears pressed to his head. He couldn’t stop himself from shivering. 

The shuttle door opened beside him.

Louis looked up and scowled. He was sure he looked pathetic, curled up and shivering like a street urchin.

Harry stared at him blankly, then sighed.

“Come in, Louis.” He stepped back into the shuttle, leaving the door open.

Louis considered telling Harry exactly where he can shove that open door—he didn’t need anyone’s pity, thank you very much. But then a crack of lightning split a tree just shy of the clearing, and Louis was on his feet and in the shuttle before he could blink.

He spent the night on the floor with a spare blanket, jacket folded underneath his head, trying (and failing) to ignore Harry’s soft snoring.

_Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Time Code: dusk._

  
The next day, Harry was off again. Foraging like a mountain man. Louis spent the morning trying to boost the shuttle’s comm signal.

He’s been working this life for so long, he didn’t even think about what he was doing until Molly’s voice flickered to life on the other end of the transmission.

“Kitten,” she said, a dark edge to her voice. There were voices in the background, but Louis couldn’t quite make them out. “You missed our rendezvous, and I haven’t heard from you in days. I hope you’re not thinking of trying to screw me over when I’ve been nothing but generous, getting you this job.”  
  
Louis gulped. The words are on the tip of his tongue—_i__t’s just a small setback, darling. You’ll have your mark in custody soon enough. _

But he couldn’t make himself say them.

He looked up instead, tuning out the static of the transmission and focusing on what’s real. What’s right in front of him. The dashboard of a stolen shuttle. A scratched-up space-proof sheet of glass, through which he could see a blue sky.  
  
And Harry.

He wasn’t doing anything particularly interesting. He was just sitting in a patch of sunlight, fiddling with an ancient communicator. Louis had no idea where he kept finding those things—he remembered the pile of antiques on his desk in the not-captain’s-quarters.

Louis pulled his cigarette packet from his pocket and stared into it. It was empty bar one.

“Louis? You still there? C’mon, don’t waste my time-” Molly was saying.

Louis pulled his last cigarette out, flipped open the latch to expose the underside of the shuttle’s dashboard, and lit the end on an exposed live wire.

“Yeah, I’m still here,” Louis answered. “I’ve got something important to tell you.”

Molly made a noise of frustration. “I’m not agreeing to any more price markups, you little shit. I’m throwing you a bone as it is.”

Louis took a drag of the cigarette. “That’s not it, Molls.”  
  
There was a moment of just static.  
  
“What is it, then?”  
  
Louis blew out his mouthful of smoke. Harry looked up for a moment, and it seemed like their eyes met through the glass even though it was only one-way.

Louis grinned. “You can go fuck yourself.”

More static. When Molly spoke again, she sounded much clearer, as if she’d moved closer to the mic. “Excuse me?”  
  
“You heard me,” Louis said around his cigarette. “Go fuck yourself.” He leaned forwards, fired up with the power of a pulsar. “And while you’re at it, fuck the entire sodding shit-shoot you call a senate.”

“If this is about the terrorism charges, I had them all dropped,” Molly growled. 

Louis laughed. “It’s not, darling.”  
  
“Then it’s about the mark?”  
  
Harry was still fiddling with the mess of circuits and wires in his hand. He grinned all of a sudden, as if he’d made a breakthrough. Louis could see, even from this far away, the small blinking lights of its now-functioning display.

“The mark’s gone,” Louis answered. He took another drag and let the synthetic nicotine flow through him, remind of him of the man he wanted to be. “I let him go.”

Molly swore. “Fuck, Louis, you’re throwing your entire career away, you know that, right?”

Louis rolled his eyes. “You don’t say,” he drawled.

“You’re going to regret this, kitten,” Molly said, voice sickly-sweet and dripping with malice. “I can make your life much harder than it already is. It’s not too late to change your mind.”

Louis ashed his cigarette and took another drag. “I think it’s actually about a thousand time units too late for that, Molls.”  
  
“Louis, be reasonable,” she snapped. “He’s a murderer and a criminal. You’re not doing anyone a favour by choosing to grow a backbone _ now, _ on this job.” Molly’s voice grew louder and louder until her shouting filled the entire shuttle. “I’m not fucking around, Louis. I know you’ve got family in the Mekra system, I’m not above using that information to bring you in line. You’re smart enough to know that I don’t make empty threats. You don’t want to piss me off–”

“Hmm, it’s funny…” Louis trailed off, pretending to be in thought.  
  
“What is?” Molly barked.  
  
“Doesn’t seem like you’ve gone and fucked yourself yet.” 

And with that, Louis killed the transmission.

The sudden silence of the shuttle wrapped around him; it was almost deafening. He allowed himself a moment to sit in it and think about what he’d just done, and then he burst to life disconnecting every last communication and navigation system on the shuttle—everything that could be used to trace its location.

Louis’ hands didn’t stop shaking for the rest of the day. He gave up on trying to work on the engine after the third time he dropped his wiring tool.

The scary thing was, Louis’ sisters _ were _in the Mekra system. They’d moved on from there years ago, but it was too much of a coincidence to be a stab in the dark.

It was exactly what he’d been most afraid of. All the jobs he’d done for her—and others like her, but far less powerful—and the thought had always been in the back of his mind; step out of line too much, and the consequences wouldn’t just be his to bear. And he couldn’t even risk warning them of the danger they could be in, or he’d lead Molly right to them.

But he had to remind himself how capable his sisters were—perfect weapons, the lot of them.

They’d always been better than Louis. He had to remember that.

_Starting To Get Bored Of Drinking Nothing But River Water. Time Code: mid-morning._

On day three, Harry presented Louis with his device. Louis looked between Harry and the screen—which contained a detailed list of the natural resources around them (plant names, insect species, their uses and edibility)—and didn’t speak for as long as it took Harry to explain himself.

“It’s for you to add to,” Harry said eventually. “If I’ve missed anything.”

_ He thinks I’ve got a single clue about any of this? _Louis thought.

“You’ve got all the little green shits?” he asked, gesturing to the treeline vaguely. 

Harry’s mouth twitched. “Yes.”

“Then you’ve surpassed my level of expertise.” Louis squinted down at the list again. “How d’you know so much about this?”

Harry sighed and pocketed the device. He looked like he was considering not answering—fair enough—but then he scratched the soft-looking scruff on his cheek and started talking.

“These outer-rim terraforming trial planets all have the same basic ecosystem, give or take a few hundred species. When I was… well, younger, I guess, I used to use them as resource hubs.” He sent Louis a wry grin. “If you’d crashed us two planets over, there’d have been a stash of spare engine parts, Quadralian currency and food rations waiting for us.”

Louis raised his chin, refusing to take the bait. “Impressive, Captain.” 

Harry shook his head and turned away. “Don’t call me that, please.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the day.

_Same clearing, same trees, same rocks. Same broken shuttle. Time Code: late afternoon._

It wasn’t until day five that Louis finally managed to melt the iron ore into a shape that he could use to beat the engine into submission. He stepped back once he’d finished his installation and grinned at his work.

It was as resourceful as it was ugly—definitely not a repair job he’d consider doing to a craft he cared about. But, with any luck, it would patch the problem for long enough to get them out of the atmosphere.

After that, it would be up to Lady Fate. Harry’s repaired communicator couldn’t get a good fix on the Orca (not a great sign, but Louis was trying to remain hopeful), and when he’d asked after the state of the shuttle’s communication system, Louis had lied through his teeth and said it was fried beyond repair.

Better to starve to death floating through space waiting to be rescued than for Molly to sink her teeth into them.

That was assuming, of course, that Harry would let him off the planet when he left.

They hadn’t talked at all about anything except the facts of their survival and the repairs that needed to be done. Louis had spent the past few days guessing then second guessing where Harry’s head was at.  
  
Call him sentimental, but he’d quite like to know if he was about to be left for dead.

“Is that it?”  
  
Louis startled. Harry was standing behind him, munching on a root of some kind. He gestured with the tooth-softened end of it towards the exposed left engine.

“Yeah, should be,” Louis answered. He wiped at his cheek, aiming for the streak of engine oil he could feel there.

Judging by Harry’s expression, he only managed to smudge it deeper into his skin.

“Can we take her for a spin?” Harry asked, wisely choosing to not comment.

Louis scoffed. “If you want to burn her out before we make it off the ground, then sure. Be my guest.”  
  
Harry munched on his root.

Louis tried to wipe his cheek again, wetting his finger first this time. “We need to leave the engines running on idle for a least three hours, preferably ten. The coolant needs to cycle all the way through a few times before I’ll trust she won’t blow up on us.”

Harry considered him. “So you’re advising I practice some restraint, merc?”  
  
Louis raised his eyebrows. “Think you might need that advice pretty often. Captain.”  
  
Harry’s nose wrinkled; Louis couldn’t tell if it was in disgust.

“In that case,” he said, reaching into his jacket. “I think it’s time to break these out.” He held out a handful of small, wrinkled mushrooms.  
  
Louis leaned forwards and took a careful sniff, then had to immediately sneeze. He’d never seen them before (at least, not in this form), but he had a pretty good idea of what they were, judging by the smell.

“Is this your sad revenge, then?” Louis dared to ask. “Poisoning me with mushrooms the night before we can finally leave?”  
  
Harry didn’t laugh, but it looked to be a close call.

“C’mon,” he simply said, then made his way over to the campfire.

_ Don’t follow, don’t follow, don’t follow, _Louis thought.

He followed.

  
  
  
_Be Careful What you Wish For. Time Code: Night._

An hour or two (or three, who was counting) later, Louis and Harry were lying beside the fire and staring up at the shifting night sky. The planet seemed to be spinning so quickly beneath Louis’ back that it was a wonder he didn’t fall right off it.

“Hey Louis, was Stevie ever really your owner?” Harry asked.

Louis started growling at the o-word. He made himself answer, “No.”

Harry sighed. “Figures.”

Louis stretched his fingers out, digging them into the dirt-and-small-rocks beneath him. “Hey Harry,” he said, matching Harry’s saccharine tone. “Who’s your father?”  
  
It was Harry’s turn to growl.

Louis shied away from the noise instinctively, fingers curling deeper into the earth. He felt something tug on the palm of his left hand, and he raised it in front of his face.

“Oh,” he said, then showed his hand to Harry. “I’m bleeding.”

Harry captured his wrist firmly. Louis got lost in the sensation of his cold skin, then the sensation of a strip of cloth being twisted tightly around his palm.

“He’s not a man you would ever want to meet, I’ll say that.” Harry’s voice was floating through Louis’ ears—both sets of them at once. 

Louis found himself laughing. “There’s not many men I _ do _want to meet,” he explained at Harry’s curious glance.

Harry smiled for a moment, then sighed. He turned back to the stars, as if resigned to his fate. His voice was flat when he spoke. “He’s the President of HybriTex.”

Louis froze.

Harry kept talking. “I spent most of my childhood sheltered from… well, everything. My mother was very protective of me. I didn’t walk into a growing facility until I was seventeen years old.” Harry shook his head. “My father paid me more attention on that one grand tour than he’d done my entire life. Can you believe that?”  
  
To Louis’ relief, emotion was starting to creep its way back in to Harry’s tone. 

And to his surprise, it was anger.

“_ Some day this will be yours, _he said. He had this, like. Big, stupid grin on his face, like–” Harry broke off to demonstrate, and Louis found himself laughing despite none of this information being remotely funny. “But all I could see was their faces, you know? They would stop talking to second we walked into an observation room.”

Louis gulped. The spinning of the planet beneath him was starting to make him feel sick. “They were well trained, then,” Louis spat. 

Harry’s jaw clenched. “I knew I couldn’t be a part of it from the second I walked in there. They’re people. They’re fucking people.” He sat up, shaking with anger. He turned to Louis, and Louis saw something so familiar in his eyes that for a moment it felt like he was looking in a mirror. “You’re a person!” Harry continued, as if daring Louis—or anyone at all—to disagree with him.

Louis didn’t try to comfort him. He simply blinked and said, “I know.”  
  
Harry started to deflate.

Louis licked his lips and continued, “So what did you do about it?”

“Something reckless,” Harry answered.  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Harry’s lips twitches and he looked away into the darkness. “I roped Zayn into it, if you can believe. We planned for weeks, sneaking out after school and throwing our parent’s money around until we got ourselves a passenger craft, a crew who didn’t ask questions, and a continent on a planet in the Gemini system for them to live freely.”

Louis’ heart started to race as he put the pieces together. “It was a prison break,” he said, sitting up to face Harry. “You got them out?”

Harry went to nod, but then his brow furrowed and he dipped his head. “Not all of them. My father must have known something was wrong; he was there, waiting for us at the facility. He didn’t even say anything to me, he just set the whole place to self destruct and gave me this look like he’d won and I was supposed to just give up.”

“Harry,” Louis warned. “Do you mean he was going to blow up the entire asteroid?”  
  
Harry nodded, lips pursed. “We got everyone out that we could, but. We had to leave a few hundred behind; there wasn’t enough time. I tried-” he grasped Louis’ arm, looking into his eyes with blown-out pupils and a burning need to be forgiven. “I tried, I swear to you that I tried.”

Louis nodded in acknowledgement.

Harry looked away, then continued, “My father did everything he could to ruin me for it. He tried to save face by claiming it was a terrorist act, and he created this whole conspiracy. I never meant to be a captain, but I couldn’t ever go home again. So I got myself a coat and a crew and I’ve spent the last few years running, trying to make up for it all.” Harry’s grip gentled on Louis’ arm as he let out a deep breath. He looked at Louis—really looked at him, like he was trying to see inside; something Louis didn’t allow when he wasn’t off his face. “I thought, with you…” Harry started. “I thought I could have a second chance, you know? Maybe make things right.”

Louis let himself sit with that. He had a moment, almost out-of-body, where his choices became clear to him; he could take a step to becoming a better man, or he could be who he was. He could see it almost perfectly; he would reach up slowly—wondering if his hand had always been this heavy—and place his palm over Harry’s. “You did more that I could,” he would say. “I only got myself and my sisters out.”

But then the moment passed, and he was himself again, and as himself, Louis was very angry.

“I’m not anyone’s pet project, Harry,” he spat. 

Harry didn’t get defensive. It was almost like he knew that already; like he’d seen it coming. He simply lied back down on the grass-and-rocks, folded his hands over his stomach, and asked, “What are you, then?”

Louis grinned wickedly and gestured to the stars. “I’m a self-made man, Harry. I’m a lone ranger; a bounty hunter; a rogue. I travel the cosmos, hunting for scoundrels and blaggards.” His voice was getting louder, hands waving with the performance of it all. “I ride the tides to rapid waters. I’m a sheriff with a spaceship. That’s what I am.”  
  
Harry let out a bright laugh. Louis watched his face transform—eyes crinkling, lips spread wide—and he realised it was the first time since they’d crashed that he’d seen the man Harry had been that night at the party, care-free and darts-throwing. “So, the scoundrels and the blaggards; are they pirates or cowboys?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Harry,” Louis huffed. “Is space a desert or an ocean?”

Harry looked upwards as he thought about it. 

Louis decided that he missed the stars, so he lay back down next to Harry and joined in his silence.

By the time Harry answered, “Both,” Louis had already forgotten what they were talking about.

“Who you are,” Harry supplied helpfully.

“Oh,” Louis said. He pressed his thumb into the bandaged cut on his left hand, just to see if it hurt. This time, Louis chose the path less travelled. “I don’t like to think about that.”

Harry turned to him and frowned. “Why not?”

The unspoken, _ I just bared my soul to you, _wasn’t too quiet to be heard.

Louis stayed silent. His tail crept over to Harry’s leg without his consent, but Harry didn’t mention it.

“I didn’t have a very nice childhood,” Louis answered finally. The simple act of saying the words out loud opened a door in his mind, and he shivered at the memories hidden within. The crack of a gunshot and the start of a dream; the days spent in training and the nights spent learning in secret, sneaking out of the library in the early hours, reading everything he could get his angry little hands on about kings, heroes, and the way it all worked. What made glass hard to scratch, why he couldn’t eat the plants that grew through cracks in the basement walls, what made an engine rumble so loud his head hurt, why the lights would flicker in a storm, what the ears on his head and the tail between his legs meant.

That he didn’t have to do what he was told.

That he didn’t have to be a weapon if he didn’t want to. 

Yet, that last lesson never quite sunk deep enough to hold on to. If it had, why would he be here, after years of so-called freedom, still trying to talk his finger off the bloody trigger.

“Tell me about it,” Harry said, like he knew what he was asking.

Louis shook his head. He wanted off this ride, now. The spinning was too fast and he wasn’t having fun. “Ask me that again when you trust me.”

“Trust you?” Harry scoffed. “Louis–”

“I quit my job.”

Harry said nothing mouth gaping open and a worryingly sober look taking over his face, and Louis couldn’t stop himself from rambling.

“I quit. All of it, but. Bringing you in, specifically. I threw away a payout of fifthy thousand credits. I told a high chancellor of the galactic senate to go fuck herself,” he started laughing; first small giggles, then hysterical peals.

Harry stared at him in wonder. 

“Louis,” he said, suddenly much closer.

Louis’ laughter died in his throat. His eyes unfocused a little, trying to keep track of Harry as his face moved in closer and closer.

When Harry spoke next, Louis felt his warm breath on his cheek. He smelt like smoke and damp earth.

“Please don’t be lying to me again.”

Before Louis could answer, he found himself unable to. There was something trapping his lips; something soft and warm pressed against them.

Louis realised he was being kissed.

_The Moment of Truth. Time Code: Dawn._

  
It was the next morning, and Louis had decided that the engine had run long enough for them to safely attempt planetary exit. Harry left the shuttle for a few minutes to clean up the remnants of their camp outside, and when he came back it was to find Louis sitting in the pilot’s chair, handcuffed to the dashboard.

He stopped in the doorway and stared.

“What’s this?” he asked, the twist to his lips telling Louis exactly where his mind has gone to.

Louis shrugged. “Don’t want you getting any bright ideas about leaving me behind.”

Harry walked over and Louis tensed, but all Harry did was kiss his head, fingers running gently over the soft fur of his ears.  
  
“Me? Never,” Harry said, smiling at the soft purr Louis unintentionally let out.

He stepped away, and Louis cleared his throat, getting to work on the startup sequence.

“Take us out of here, Sheriff,” he commands, making himself comfortable in the co-pilot’s chair.

The shuttle door pressurised with a hiss, and Louis sent one last look around the clearing before punching it.

Harry was laughing as they broke atmosphere, the shuttle shaking so badly Louis thought his teeth would rattle off his jaw. He was almost glad to be handcuffed to the dashboard; he had no choice but to keep a steady hand on the steering.

The second they were free of the planet, trees fading into a wash of green, Harry was on his communicator.

“Orca? Do you read?” he said, fiddling with the frequencies. “Orca, come in please. Let me hear you, you beautiful fish.”

“They might not still be in the system, Harry,” Louis warned softly.

Harry ignored him, and tried again.

It took thirty minutes of Harry repeating his communication and Louis flying blind for them to get a response.

“Captain? Come in, Shuttlecraft 4. Is that you, Harry?” came Liz’s static-y voice from the communicator. 

Harry sent a look Louis’ way and mouthed, _ told you. _

“How’s my ship doing, Liz?” he then answered with a grin.

“Better now that we’ve found you, H,” Zayn chimed in. “What happened? I look away for one second and you’re launching a shuttle and falling off the face of the universe.”

Louis looked away, ears flatting against his hair.

“Shuttle had a small engine failure, we had to improvise,” Harry said smoothly.  
  
Louis turned to him in surprise.

Harry met his gaze across the dashboard. _ Keep driving, _he mouthed, chin jutting towards the steering console. 

“...Right,” said Zayn. “Well, you’d better sit tight while we come and get you, Harry.”

Harry frowned. “What’s wrong.”

“Our captain fucked off and we had a crew to feed and a ship to refuel, so we took a run at the Stradeus port,” snapped Liz.

Louis winced. He took the time to unlock the cuff around his wrist and shove the set back into his jacket.

“A smash and grab?” Harry guessed.

There was a guilty silence from the other end of the line.

“So, we’ve got some battle drones on our tail,” Liz said. “We can’t quite manage to shake them, and there’s a senatorial cruiser headed our way that’s _ definitely _noticed.”

“Shit,” Louis hissed. His hands flew across the console, and then he disappeared under the dashboard to reconnect the navigation and transmission. There was no point trying to stay off Molly’s radar when their ship was speeding past a sodding cruiser, looking guiltier than a Milton raider with a blood-soaked grin on her face.

“Hold tight, Orca,” Harry instructed, wisely staying out of Louis’ way. “The cavalry’s coming.”

_Docked, Locked, and Loaded. Phalaris Belt. Sector 5-2. Time Code: 49871._

The shouting on the bridge just kept getting louder. Each moment Louis thought he’d had enough, and then another moment would follow.

It was chaos; Louis wasn’t even sure who was steering the sodding thing, and they still had twenty drones up their sizeable ass. 

Harry was in the middle of it all, of course. The fearsome captain; equal parts slinging orders and trying to keep the peace.

Louis hunched against the wall and covered his ears, trying to focus.

_ Think, think thinkthink. _

Louis looked up, the spark of an idea in his eyes. “What if we cut the power.”

The shouting continued, but Niall had heard him. He looked at Louis’ resolved expression, then turned to the crowd.

“Everyone, shut the fuck up!” 

There was finally, blessedly, silence.

"We need to shut the entire ship down—engine, reserves, everything. You've got enough oxygen floating around this ship to last a week with such a small number of crew, especially if you open up all the tunnels and ducts. And the insulated hull'll give you a solid ten hours before the temperature drops below zero," Louis ranted. He was getting so keyed up about the specifics that he realised he’d completely forgotten to explain his reasoning, which a room full of horrified faces reminded him of. 

Zayn piped up before Louis could. “It _ would _fool the drones into thinking we’ve been destroyed. They’re usually programmed with pretty basic AIs.” he considered Louis. "S'actually kinda genius."

Liz scoffed. "That's assuming Nicks hasn’t reprogrammed them,” she argued. “If she has, we'll be sitting ducks and defenceless without our shields. All due respect, kitten, but it’s a terrible plan.”

Harry didn’t blink. “Do you have a better one?” 

Liz opened her mouth, then grimaced.

Harry nodded. “We’re doing it. Liam, coordinate the rest of the crew—we’re gonna need everyone on board with this. Zayn, start the countdown. We go dark in two.”

There were no more arguments. 

And when the two minutes were up, Louis got to watch with a smug grin on his face as the lights cut back to the emergency reflectors, the engine’s constant rumble quieted beneath him, the crew held their breaths, and the drones outside the hull stopped in mid-space.

“Well, fuck me, I guess,” Liz muttered. 

The drones pivoted and sped away, back towards Stradeus AG8.

Harry cheered weakly, and the tension was released. Even Zayn cracked a smile.

“How long do you think we’ll need to stay shut down?”

Louis blinked, then realised he was being addressed. He turned to Zayn.

“At least for as long as it’ll take them to get back, then an extra half hour just to be safe. Do you have their returning coordinates?”  
  
Zayn hummed, then shuffled to the left so Louis could squeeze in next to him at his station. 

Behind them, the rest of the crew dispersed until only the main bridge team remained. 

“Right, so, that’ll take them…” Louis tilted his head to the side and squinted at the numbers. "Four hundred and twenty two minutes, if they maintain a consistent speed. D’you think?”

Zayn was staring at him quizzically. “Hey, boss,” he said, not taking his eyes of Louis. “Where’d you find this one again?”

Louis flashed his fangs at him. “They made me special.”

Harry’s voice appeared over Louis’ shoulder, followed by his hand on Louis’ waist. “Problem, boys?”  
  
Zayn shook his head and turned back to the screen. “No problems, mate. Cat Calculator and I were just timing the engine restart.”  
  
Harry hummed, then pointed to the inoperative scanners. “Did you get a glimpse of the Senatorial cruiser before we shut down?”

Zayn scratched his beard. The hue of the emergency lights made his whole body look the same colour as his neon-lime hair. “Yeah, but you’re not gonna like it.”  
  
“Let me guess,” Liz drawled. “It was buggering off towards the Capital? Classic senate, can’t pick a fight they know they won’t win.”

Louis didn’t bother to tell her the sad truth of it; with the skeleton crew Harry was running with, even the smallest Senatorial cruiser could have crippled them.

The look in Harry’s eyes said he was thinking the same thing.

“Right, well.” He sighed. “I’ve just spent almost a week without a shower, sleeping in a shuttle and peeing in a bush. Zayn, you’ve got the bridge. Liz, don’t do anything stupid. Nobody wake me up unless we’re being boarded.” 

With that, he stomped off the bridge. 

Louis followed him with his eyes.

“Hey, Louis–” Zayn started. “Fine, alright, nevermind,” he finished, after being presented with Louis’ fast retreating back.

_Back in the Belly of the Beast. Time Code: 49982._

  
  
Louis was leaning against Harry’s door by the time he arrived.

Harry didn’t seem surprised to see him, nor did make any comments. He just tugged on Louis’ waist gently then clicked the opening mechanism behind Louis’ back.

He stepped around Louis into the room, and Louis followed. 

Harry nodded towards the bathroom. “You coming?” he asked, pushing his heavy coat off his shoulders then watching it fall to the floor of his quarters.

Louis was so distracted by the offer that the snick of the door closing behind him made him start.

“No, thank you,” he answered at Harry’s probing look. “I don’t really like to get wet.”

Harry snorted, then grinned. “Well, you’ll have to amuse yourself, then.” He gestured to the device sitting on his desk. “My password’s–”

“Berries, I know,” Louis cut in. “Five ‘b’s, right?” 

Harry’s nose wrinkled—Louis still had no fucking clue what that meant, was he hungry?—and he turned away. “I really should stop being surprised by that.”

Louis ducked his head, and the small glass door that separated the main quarters from the bathing area clicked shut.  
  
Louis sat down on Harry’s bed, fingers flexing on the sheets. He looked around at the mess of the room, then made a face at the fern in the corner. 

The noise of running water filled his ears, followed by soft, deep humming. Louis pulled off his boots as he tried to place the tune: it was familiar in a buried sort of way.

His hands raised to his jacket before hesitating. 

Louis frowned, then made himself pull the stiff fabric off his shoulders. He stared at it in his hands for a few minutes, lost in thought. Then, he tossed it across the room. It landed in a heap, halfway atop Harry’s coat.

Louis let himself collapse backwards then stared up at the smoke marks on the ceiling. He closed his eyes, thinking of when he was younger, when he would use the paint chips and scratches and watermarks in his room to tell his sisters bedtime stories, pointing out imaginary animals and quests.

They’d been too old for that for a long time, but the memory still made him smile.

“Louis?”

Louis hummed.

The mattress dipped to his left. He felt his tail swish towards the weight, then soft fingers smoothing it down.

“If I lie down next to you, am I gonna get a needle in the thigh?”  
  
Louis opened his eyes. 

Harry was wearing only a soft-looking pair of sweatpants and a tired smile. He was smoking a cigarette, and Louis wondered how he managed to miss the smell of artificial nicotine.

Louis sat up and stole it from his hand. “No,” he mumbled around a drag, “but you might get a claw to the stomach if you’re not careful.”

Harry nodded. “Fair enough.”  
  
Louis snorted, then coughed on the smoke. “Which part of this is fair? You do realise,” he leaned closer, “that we’re all fucking done for.”

Harry considered him. His muscles tensed, and that was all the warning Louis had before he had a lapful of heavy rebel captain.

“_Done for,” _Harry mocked, mimicking Louis’ accent with bizarre accuracy. “You’re writing us off already?” 

Louis rolled his eyes. Harry stole the cigarette from out of his mouth.

Louis retaliated by kneading his still-damp stomach, nails leaving occasional scratches on his skin.

“No. I don’t know how to write,” Louis purred, blinking up at Harry through his eyelashes. 

Harry tilted his head to the side, allowing Louis’ touches for reasons Louis couldn’t fathom. “Does that actually work on people?”

Louis grinned fiercely. “You’d be surprised.”

“Got you out of worse scrapes than this one?” 

Louis’ hands steadied. He pressed his palms into Harry’s pectoral muscles, wondering if he pushed hard enough, he could keep his ribs intact and his heart in his chest.

“Do you really not care if you live or die?” Louis asked.

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” Harry evaded. He took a final drag of the cigarette, then ashed it on the bed frame, stretching his torso over Louis’ head to reach.

Louis’ ear flicked against his skin, and Harry giggled at the sensation.

“You’ve strapped yourself to a wild horse, there, cowboy,” he said, lifting himself off Louis’ lap and collapsing onto the pillows. 

There was something so darkly appealing about Harry’s laissez-faire attitude in the face of certain defeat. Louis could barely comprehend it—long fused pathways in his brain sputtered to life at the very concept.

The humour faded from Harry’s eyes the longer he looked up at Louis’ face.

“Why do I trust you?” he asked. It didn’t sound like he was expecting an answer, but Louis was offended enough to give one.

“What did we do last night, Harry?”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. “Kissed?” he guessed.

“And?”  
  
Harry’s eyes narrowed, then widened. “You fell asleep next to me. You didn’t wake up the whole night, not even when I had to get up to take a piss.”

Louis wrinkled his nose. “Charming. Conclusions, Captain?”

Harry wriggled underneath the sheets then twisted his body, tucking his face into the crook of his arm. “I get it. You feel safe with me,” he mumbled. Louis had to strain his ears just to make it out.

Louis tapped the control panel next to the bed, then switched off the lights. Harry let out a pleased sigh at the sudden darkness, then another when Louis buried into his side.

“Don’t go telling the whole galaxy I’ve gone soft, mind,” Louis warned.

He was met with a faint snore.

_In the Middle of the Night. _ _Time Code: 49993._

It took Harry two minutes into Louis’ conversation with his sisters to wake up.

“Whattss-” he slurred, blinking blearily at his ancient device, sitting soundly in Louis’ lap and displaying an ongoing video transmission with four fierce-looking hybrids.

“Is that him?” Charlotte asked, peering at the corner of the screen. 

Louis rolled his eyes. “No,” he deadpanned. With a strong grip on Harry’s arm, he hauled him into a seating position.

Harry leaned into his side and rubbed at his eyelids. “Hello,” he mumbled. 

Louis watched him with a smile, then cleared his throat when he realised what he was doing. “Harry, meet Charlotte, Felicite, Daisy and Phoebe. My sisters.”

Harry’s mouth gaped open. “Oh, uh,” he looked around frantically, then lent over the edge of the bed to grab a dirty shirt off the floor. Lottie snickered into her hand as Harry pulled the shirt over his head. “Nice to meet you,” he said, still emerging from the shirt.

“Likewise,” Daisy answered, a devilish grin on her face.

“We hear you’re tits deep in a senatorial waste pit, Captain,” said Lottie.

“Christ, Lotts.”

“What?” she challenged, then turned back to Harry. “I don’t know how you’ve managed it, but you’ve got our brother on your side. So, there’s hope for you yet.”

Harry sent Louis a sidelong smile. 

“What they’re trying to say, H,” Louis said, leaning closer, “is that I’ve got a plan, and they’re gonna help.”

Harry stared at him for a moment, a complicated expression on his face. 

He covered the device’s camera with his palm, ignored Louis’ sister’s cries of indignation, and kissed him.

Louis laughed into the kiss, and soon enough Harry was laughing too.  
  
He let Louis pull his hand away from the camera and met his sister’s annoyed expressions with an unapologetic shrug.

“Enough fucking about, boys,” Lottie said, flicking her hair behind her ear. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

_Tits Deep in a Senatorial Waste Pit. Phalaris Belt. Sector 5-2. Time Code: 50083._

“All due respect, Captain, but that’s insane.” 

Liz was pacing across the bridge, checking the navigation station, then the scanners over Zayn’s shoulder, then back around to the tactical station to check the weapons array. Rinse, repeat. 

Louis was getting tired of the restless energy. 

Perhaps he was just tired in general; he hadn’t exactly slept.

Harry had, but you wouldn’t know it looking at him. His hair was a curly mess, his coat wasn’t sitting straight on his stiff shoulders, and the expression on his face told everyone in the room exactly how much patience he had (exactly zero).

Harry opened his mouth to reply to Liz and Louis reached his hand up and pressed it to the side of Harry’s throat to quiet him. Harry looked at him, closing his mouth.

Their eyes separated as Louis turned to face the bridge crew.

“_ All due respect,” _Louis drawled, “but none of you are in a position to reject help at the moment, yeah?” His ear flicked, and he looked over to Zayn sharply. “How soon will that senate cruiser be here?”

“What?” Zayn asked, tapping on the long range scanner to his left. “Shit, when did that get there?” he asked himself, fingers flying on the screen. “It’s bearing down on us, full engine power and maximum thrust. There’s a few falcon class starships in its trail. Estimated time to intercept: thirty minutes.”

“You don’t report to him, Zayn,” Liz huffed. “You,” she pointed at Louis, “who are you? And don’t try any of that bullshit drowned kitten act, you might have the captain fooled but some of us aren’t idiots.”

Harry laughed, to the surprise of almost everyone in the room. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Liz,” he said. “You’re demoted. Get off my bridge until you can say something helpful.”

Liz stood her ground. “I’m not going to do that, Harry. If your little pet project is a plant from the senate, then we’re going to be offering ourselves up with bared fucking throats. I’m just trying to watch our backs.”

Louis reached into his coat and pulled out a small, metal object. Liz’ eyes widened.

“Darling,” Louis drawled, tossing the object to her. “I’m sure you know what that is.”

“A remote detonator,” she answered, studying the object now in her hands. “What is this, kitten?”

“An efficient use of our last few minutes of freedom, I’m sure” Louis answered. “That device controls this,” Louis flashed the inside of his jacket, and pointed to the blinking red plasma bomb in his inside pocket. “You see me make any moves towards betraying you or your crew? And you can send me to kingdom come.”

“Louis, what the fuck?” Harry growled. “No.”

Louis blinked at him flirtatiously. “I’m not going to punish her for being the only one without a death wish on this ship, Captain. Liz, we’re going to need your cooperation as head of security on this. Zayn?”  
  
“Estimated intercept in twenty three minutes, Louis.”

“Thank you. Any further questions about the plan, or can we get the fuck on with it?”

He looked around at the bridge crew, and everyone met his eyes steadily. 

“Great,” Harry barked. “You’ve all got your orders. Get to work.”

As everyone moved to follow his command, Harry turned to Louis. “That was hot, baby,” he purred, sneaking a hand around Louis’ waist. 

“That’s Co-Captain to you,” Louis shot back. 

“Oh, you’ve promoted yourself!” Harry seemed nothing but delighted. 

“Any objections?” 

“None, Captain.”  
  
“Thank you, Captain.”

“You’re welcome.” Harry grinned. “Captain.”

“Captain?” Zayn asked. 

Harry and Louis both turned towards him. 

“Niall and Liam are ready. They’re meeting us in Cargo Bay Three.”

Harry nodded, and together with Zayn they stepped off the bridge and into the lift.

“You really think this is going to work?” Zayn asked as they watched the floors fly passed. 

“Not a fucking chance,” Louis answered with a sharp grin.

“But if it does,” Harry added, “just think how cool it’ll be.”

Zayn shook his head. “Remember when you asked me to become your second in command?” 

“Of course,” Harry said.

The lift doors snicked open, revealing the large white space of Cargo Bay Three. Zayn turned and stepped backwards out of the lift. “Should’ve said no.”

Harry snorted, and Zayn cracked a smile.

“Lads!” Liam called, waving them over from the control panel.

Niall met them in the middle, pressing a kiss to Zayn’s cheek. 

“Ready?” Harry asked, rolling his shoulders.  
  
Liam nodded towards the shuttle in the centre of the room, loaded and powered up. Its doors were open, wide and inviting, but Louis didn’t think he’d be happy about being in a shuttle for a good long time.

“Alright,” Harry clapped his hands and started walking towards it. “Liam, let’s crack that window, shall we? Niall, Zayn, in the shuttle. Louis?”  
  
“Yes, Captain?”  
  
“Flip a coin to see who’s driving?”

Louis threw his head back with a laugh. 

Zayn and Niall stared at him.

“Think I’ll stick to co-pilot, thanks,” Louis said, ducking into the shuttle and buckling himself down into the smaller of the two chairs. 

There was a sudden rush of noise as the cargo bay doors rolled open, revealing the vacuum of space through a transparent forcefield. 

“Nice one, Liam,” Harry called. “Now get your cute butt on the shuttle, we’ve got a date.”

“A date?” Liam puffed, hopping inside and slamming the door shut behind him. “I’m not dressed for a date.”

“You look fine,” Harry soothed, punching buttons and flicking switches. He turned in his chair to type the startup code into the wall panel and the shuttle burst into motion, shooting up through the cargo bay. “I’m sure she’ll love you!” he yelled over the sound of the rushing air. 

And then, silence. And blackness. And stars.

“Ladies and gentleman,” Niall announced, sounding like a soothing ad for a vacation planet in the Leda system, “we are floating in space.”

Louis shook his head. He turned from the view to monitor their course. “Slow her down now,” he warned. “The cruiser’s due to intercept in fifteen.”

“Aye, aye.” Harry pulled back on the thrusters, and the shuttle came to a slow halt. With an expert flick of his hand, the engines quietened. 

“How can we be sure they won’t still see us?” Liam questioned, appearing over Harry’s shoulder. 

Louis leant back in his chair, folding his arms behind his head. “Honest answer: we can’t. Smart answer: that cruiser’s got a pissed off high chancellor in the bridge right now, and they’ve got five falcons to keep track of on top of that. Their captain will be stretched thin, and if someone not too bright is on scanner duty, they’ll register us as expelled cargo. Pretty easy to ignore, if you’re used to boarding smugglers who like to panic and dump the more illegal shit before the senate can get to them.”

Niall whistled. “Good thing you’re on our side, Louis. That’s pretty bloody smart.”

Louis shrugged. “Been around.”  
  
Zayn looking him up and down. “That so.”  
  
“Hey,” Harry interrupted, nodding towards the front window. “We’ve got visual.”

The senatorial cruiser was an ugly thing; red and misshapen, with more radar dishes and torpedo cannons than could ever be useful. The falcons were another matter; they were where Louis was setting his sights.

It took a few minutes of watching and waiting before the ships were close enough to make any sort of judgements.

“There,” he pointed to the very last one in the pack. “When the rest have passed us, we’ll go for her.”

Harry nodded, but he was distracted by the view. Louis followed his gaze, twisting in his seat to watch the cruisers come to a stop, facing off against the Orca like a cyberrat against an entire junkyard. 

“Harry?”

Harry startled slightly, then shook his head. “‘S just funny,” he answered. “I think I’ll miss her.”

Louis looked away, discomfited. “You’ll have time for that later, Captain.” 

Harry sighed. His fingers were poised to start the engines back up, waiting for the right moment. 

Louis watched as the falcons came closer and closer to the cruiser, until only the last was left to bring up the rear of the formation.

“Now.”

Harry punched it, and Zayn, Liam, and Niall cursed from the back at the sudden rush of speed. 

It only took thirty seconds to reach the falcon. She’d swung around and was entering into a defensive position when Harry killed the engines again. 

“You ready, Liam?” he asked over his shoulder. 

The shuttle rocked and shuddered as the falcon’s tractor beam caught them in a burst of light and started pulling them in. Louis looked up to see her cargo bay doors opening above them like a mouth ready to swallow.  
  
A magnificent ship, the falcon. Roughly twenty times smaller than an Orca, but five times as fast. 

Not great security, though. 

But Louis could fix that.

“Ready, Captain,” said Liam.  
  
Louis spun his chair around to see him fastening the helmet over the top of a neon orange space suit. 

“Now that’s fashion,” Louis said.

Liam laughed, but he sounded more nervous than amused.

“Good luck,” Harry wished.

Liam nodded to Niall and Zayn, and together they reached upwards and tugged open the hatch. Liam jumped up, hands catching on the sides. He crawled the rest of the way through it and into the storage space above. Once he was clear of the opening, Zayn and Niall pulled it firmly shut. 

“Can you hear me, Liam?” Harry asked, activating the communication device Harry had given him; it was operating on an unused frequency, thanks to its age, so with a bit of luck the senate cruiser wouldn’t intercept the transmission.

“Loud and clear, Captain,” came the response. “Depressurising now.”

Louis leaned towards the receiver. “Once you open that vent, you’re going to be sucked up into the falcon’s cargo bay at a rate of about ten metres a second. The suit should protect you from most of the damage, but the inertia’ll be a right bitch.”

“Got it. I always did like rollercoasters.”

Harry snorted.

“On three, Captain.”

“Thank you, Liam.”

Liam didn’t bother counting aloud. The shuttle shook as he activated the emergency cargo vent. 

Harry closed his eyes. Zayn and Niall didn’t react; they seemed to be standing there stoically, then Louis noticed how tightly they were holding each other’s hands.

Louis wondered what it must feel like, to be worried about a crewmate. 

“Captain?” came Liam’s voice.

Harry let out a breath. “You alright up there, cowboy?” he asked with a shaky grin.

“Never better. The tractor beam’s on auto pull, and the security guard is taken care of. Thanks for the injector, Niall.”  
  
“You’re welcome, mate,” Niall answered, then added with a glance in Louis’ direction, “We’re just giving them away, these days.”

Louis met his eyes with a practiced ease. 

Niall looked away.

“You should be breaching in about twenty seconds or so, brace yourselves.”

“Thank you, Liam,” Harry answered.  
  
Louis shut his eyes as the tractor beam pulled them the last of the way. He never liked this part; the awful sight of wide open space being cut off by steel walls.

The sound of the shuttle door opening pulled him out of it.

“Alright, how long will we have?” Harry asked as everyone disembarked into the falcon’s cargo bay, doors firmly shut beneath their feet.

“Security reinforcements are already trying to get in, Captain,” Liam answered, gesturing towards the door in the far corner. “I’ve sealed it off, but it shouldn’t take them too long to crack it.”

“The cruiser will give them a five minute window before they send one of the other falcons over as backup,” Louis added, already familiarising himself with the control panel. 

“And how long do we need?” Harry asked.

Louis shrugged. “As long as it takes.”

“Right. Of course,” Harry drawled. 

Louis dropped to his knees and pulled open the covering to expose the wires beneath. 

“Zayn, do you think you can cut off their communications from that far panel?” he asked. 

“Already on it,” Zayn answered, voice echoing around the small cargo bay. “How badly am I allowed to fuck this?” 

Louis grinned as he stripped down a wire, then another. “Quick and dirty sabotage, Zayn. I’ll get her up and running again, don’t you worry, lad.”

“You asked for it,” he muttered, and then there was a loud bang.

“Jesus, Z,” Harry barked. 

Louis peered over the top of the panel to see a blaster hole right through the centre of the communications relay. Louis laughed delightedly. “Yeah, that should do it.”

Zayn shrugged. “You want this back?” he asked, waving the blaster.

Louis buried himself back in his work. “If I didn’t want you to have it, I wouldn’t have let you knick it,” he answered. “You’re not slick, love.”

“Whatever.”

“Progress, Louis?” Harry asked, leaning his arms on the panel and staring down at him.

“One second, darling,” Louis answered, sickly sweet. “And… there.”

The lights in the room dimmed, and the rumble of the engine stopped beneath their feet. 

The banging on the door became frantic. 

“You ready, Niall?” Louis asked, dusting himself off.

Niall nodded, then pulled out a sealed container from his medical bag.

“Airflow pipes?” Louis asked, directing his question to Liam.

Liam gestured towards the ceiling. 

Louis looked up. “Shit.” 

“Yeah.”

Harry crossed his arms. “Just invert the gravity field.”

Louis blinked at him. 

“What, didn’t you think of that?” Harry sassed, coming over to Louis. He reached around him and tapped on the control panel. “Everyone, hang on to something. Except you, Niall.”

“Yeah, cheers,” Niall answered. “Fuck’s sake, Harry. I’m a doctor, not a circus act.”

Harry laughed, and that was all the warning they got before the world was turned upside down.  
  
Louis let out a low growl, scrambling to keep his hold on the panel. The fur on his ears and tail stood on end. 

“Nearly got it…” Niall muttered, clacking about in the airflow tube above them.

Louis’ growl raised in pitch until Harry’s gentle grasp on the side of his neck quietened it.

Niall cheered. There was a soft hiss as the noxious gas he’d brought released into the oxygen vents and started to circulate throughout the ship. 

“You can let us down now, Captain,” Niall called, pushing himself away from the wall so he could land safely.

Harry pressed a button and Louis dropped to the ground. He landed on his feet, naturally, but his stomach still felt the wrong way up. Annoyingly, Liam, Harry, and Zayn all seemed unaffected.

“Louis?” Harry asked.

Louis let out a breath, jaw clenching. “That was great fun,” he snapped. “Let’s go again.”

Harry let go of his neck. “Well, if you say so,” he teased, fingers hovering over the buttons.

Louis snatched his hand away from the screen. 

“Alright, lads,” Niall said, smoothing his hair back down. “Get your gassies on.” He opened his medical bag wide to reveal five gas masks inside. 

Louis was the first to reach him, and was settling his over nose by the time the rest of the lads were grabbing theirs. 

“You look cute,” Niall said, poking Zayn in the stomach. 

Zayn tolerating that for reasons Louis couldn’t fathom.

“Final step: hostile takeover,” Liam announced.

The five of them looked towards the door, and Louis grinned.

  
  
_Phalaris Belt, Neat, Hold the Ice. Time Code: 51495._

Back on the Orca, things weren’t going quite so smoothly.

“No,” Liz repeated. She was lounging in the captain’s chair on an empty bridge drinking from a bottle of parp-flavoured ethanol. It wasn’t as relaxing as it sounds, given the situation she’d somehow found herself in. 

“What part of ‘we are preparing to board your vessel’ don’t you understand?” huffed the captain from the other side of the video transmission. “This is a _ stolen _senate-issue colonising vessel. We can bypass your shields. There’s nothing you can do except surrender into custody.”

Liz pretended to think about it as she took another swig. “Hmm,” she said, tapping her chin. “No.”

The captain growled, but was interrupted by a new voice.

“You’re wasting your time, Captain. This is clearly some sort of diversion.” 

Liz’s eyes narrowed as the speaker stepped into frame. “Molly Carbendal, I presume?”

Molly was dressed in dark purple fabric, her hair was pulled off her face into a messy pony tail. She didn’t look a day over fifty, but she did look ready to kill the next person who got in her way.

“Where is Captain X?” she growled.

“Who?” 

“Harry Styles, your captain. Playing dumb looks great on you, by the way,” she snapped.

“Thanks, but I already have a girlfriend,” Liz simpered. “And I’ve never heard of him.”

Molly rolled her eyes. “This is getting us nowhere.”

The captain motioned to the cadet in charge of the communication station, and the video’s audio cut out. 

Liz laughed under her breath.

“Cute,” she said, concentrating on the movements of their lips.

“What about your contact?” the captain was saying. “The hybrid?”

“Well, that’s interesting,” Liz said, reaching into her pocket. Her fingers closed over the remote detonator when Molly started to respond.

“He’s gone rogue. I can’t make contact with him, and he’s too smart to leave a trail. He could be halfway across the galaxy by now.”

Liz paused then slowly pulled her hand from her pocket. 

“Then what do you suggest, Chancellor,” the captain said.

Liz could tell by her body language that she was getting fed the fuck up.

Molly’s eyes narrowed, and she turned her back to the camera.

An ensign jumped into motion in response to some unknown command, tapping on his screen. “We’ve just made contact,” he said. “They were just having trouble stabilising the tractor beam. No rebels found on the shuttle they captured.”

“—decoy,” Molly said; Liz only caught the last word as she turned back to the camera. “Put us back on with her.”

The audio crackled to life, and Liz grinned. 

“Yes?”

“Our boarding ships have attached to your hull,” the captain said. Liz checked the screen next to her with disinterest.

“So they have,” she said. 

“You will surrender your bridge to our forces or face the consequences of your crimes. The charges against your crew warrant execution.” The captain raised her eyebrows, clearly expecting that news to be a shock to her.

Liz finished the bottle in one long drag. She licked her lips and grinned. “No.”

With the press of a button, the video transmission cut off. 

Liz stood, then laughed at her shaky feet. 

“That son of a bitch,” she said, stumbling off the bridge and into the lift. “This just might work.”

_Phalaris Belt. Time Code: 51538._

On the bridge of the senatorial cruiser, a cadet was staring at a blinking dot. “Uhhh,” he said, rising to stand. “Captain? You might want to take a look at this.”

“What?” she said, stalking over. 

“A Genovian Battleship is headed our way. The specs on this thing…” he trailed off, trying to understand the readout before him. “I’ve never seen anything like it, sir.”

“Hm,” the captain said. “Chancellor? Are we expecting company?” 

Molly frowned. “These rebels have no known allies. A rather influential business owner has made sure of that.”

The captain’s lips pinched. “Captain to boarding ship Alpha.”

“Yes, Captain?” 

“How long until hull breach?”

“We’re working on the cargo bay doors now, sir. Three minutes until breach. They’re pretty secure.”

“No, shit,” she muttered. “Hurry it up, that’s an order. We’ve got company.”

There was no response.

“Captain?” 

“What, cadet?” she snapped. 

“Falcon 5 is heading off course. It’s on an intercept path with the Orca.”

The captain swore. “Get them on screen.”

The communications panel flashed red, and the cadet looked up with fear in his eyes. “Can’t establish, sir.”

“What the fuck is going on here,” she snapped. 

Molly had the gall to laugh. 

“I think I’ve got a pretty good idea,” she said. 

“I’d love to hear it, Chancellor.”

Molly’s grin turned feral. “How much do you know about Louis Tomlinson?”

The captain froze, eyes wide. “From the Tomlinson experiment? _ He’s _your rogue merc?” 

Molly nodded. 

“Chancellor,” the captain said, then she stepped closer and lowered her voice. “Molly.”

Molly’s grin faded. 

“Why the fuck would you get him involved in this.”

Molly was saved from answering by a loud beeping. 

“Captain?” 

“What? What is it?” she snapped. 

“Boarding ship Alpha has disconnected from the Orca. The battleship has secured a towing line to it, and they’ve engaged their thrusters. They’re retreating, sir.”

The captain ran a hand down her face. “Anything else, Cadet?” 

The cadet cleared his throat. “The Orca has initiated a self destruct sequence.”

The captain closed her eyes. 

“And Falcon Five has joined the battleship on its course, sir.”

“Torpedo lock on all three escaping ships, now,” she barked. 

“The Orca is between us and the ships, sir,” the cadet answered. 

“She’s set to blow any second, sir,” another one piped up.

Molly started laughing again.

“God fucking damn it,” said the captain.

_Leaving the Phalaris Belt. Time Code: 51820_

“So?” Louis said, watching five small blinking dots get blown back out of the range of his scanner as a larger sixth blinking dot disappeared.

Harry snorted from the captain’s chair. The view from the Falcon's main window had to fight for space in between an ongoing video transmission with four hybrids on the bridge of a battleship and one with Harry’s entire crew, crammed together in the senate cruiser’s stolen boarding ship.

“So,” Harry answered, “I think this might be a good time to announce that Louis’ promoted himself to Co-Captain. Will you all kindly welcome him to the revolution?” 

There was a mess of cheering from the crew.

“After that? Think I’m feeling pretty welcoming,” Zayn said, his soft voice somehow managing to be heard over the staticky shouts and hollers.

“Just don’t forget, kitten,” came Liz’s voice: Louis managed to spot her in amongst the crew, her girlfriend on her shoulder and a remote detonator held aloft in her hand, “I’m keeping this.”  
  
Louis didn’t have the heart to tell her that he’d disconnected the transmitter in it years ago.

_In orbit around Morena One. Capheaous System. Red Quadrant. Time Code: 56349._

Louis hadn’t expected his sisters to be very interested in a revolution. 

“But Louis,” Lottie had purred, flicking her ears back and grinning that sharp grin of hers, “it sounds like so much fun.”

He’d learned a long time ago that he couldn’t talk them out of things. 

They’d had the same training he did; they’d bled from the same wounds. 

Of course they were just as stubborn as him.

“What was it you said?” Harry answered, when Louis asked for his thoughts on the battleship that had been bringing up their rear for the past month. They'd been following along like an overpowered security escort as the Falcon toured from port to port: ticking off the first few rebel-sympathising contacts off Louis' long list of them; spreading their bad seeds; collecting much-needed supplies. “_None of us are in a position to reject help, _hm?” 

“How dare you use my own words against me. Low blow, Captain.”

“Well,” Harry grinned—the slow one that meant he was about to say something ‘clever’. “You’re too short for any other kind.”

It was amazing how Harry could manage to laugh with a blaster aimed at his head. 

“I’m leaving you for that,” Louis warned. Since the blaster wasn’t active and he’d neglected to crawl off Harry’s lap as he said it, it was clearly an empty threat. 

Harry’s expression turned sincere, then.  
  
Louis dropped the weapon onto the floor, skin crawling.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he warned. 

Harry ignored him.   
  
“You know you can, right?” he said instead, taking his hands off Louis’ thighs and raising them in the air. “You can leave any time.”

“Fuck off,” Louis answered. “‘Course I know that.”

Harry smiled and reached up to pull Louis’ ears back up. Louis hadn’t even realised they’d dropped against his head. 

“There you go,” Harry smiled, pinching the skin at the top before letting go. “Happy ears only.”

Louis rolled his eyes. 

Harry was still smiling when he said, “I know you hate it when I’m nice to you, but you’re just going to have to get used to it.”

Louis shot him a look. A month of nothing but Harry, and Louis hadn't seen any signs for this mysterious ‘used to it’ state (perhaps he'd missed the turnoff). Not that they hadn’t been busy, mind; they did have a revolution to plan. Without the Orca slowing them down, they’d already secured four spaceports and three outer rim colonies to the cause. It was Louis’ hope that with enough support, they could avoid a civil war. The senate only had so many ships, and the galaxy was a big fucking place. They could make it a fight the senate couldn't win.

But that was for Tomorrow-Louis to think about. 

Tonight-Louis was relaxing after a long, loud party—Niall and Zayn were getting married, and Louis had to pretend to understand why he should care about that for several long hours. Harry had cracked open an entire cask of parp wine and then the party devolved from there; Louis was glad when he and Harry managed to time their escape right when Liz got her hands on the mess hall’s musical accompaniment program.

Louis sighed and dipped his thumbs into the dimples on Harry’s cheeks. Harry laughed. His green eyes looked so bright in the darkness of their shared quarters.

“You’re adopting four more problems just like me, you realise that?” 

Harry frowned for a moment, clearly having forgotten what they were talking about. It was an odd contract to the smile still on his face. “Oh,” he said. “You’re not worried about them, you’re worried about me?”

Louis set his jaw, but didn’t deny it.

“Baby,” Harry cooed, pressing his face into Louis’ bare neck. “What am I?”

“A big bad rebel captain,” Louis answered, scratching his back lightly. 

“And what can I do?” Harry probed, still talking into Louis’ skin.

“Take care of yourself.”  
  
“Mhm.” 

“Get off me, you’re heavy,” Louis said, making no move to let him go.

“You know,” Harry said, pulling back far enough to see his face. “Niall’s accused us of being worse than him and Zayn.”

“Mutiny.”

Harry laughed brightly. “That’s what I said! But Liz agreed, and her girlfriend agreed, and then Liam was there and it became an intervention. Thanks for buggering off yesterday during the security drill, by the way.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So, what do you think, Captain?”

“They can all walk the plank.”  
  
“Quite right, Captain.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

And then there was no more talking. There was only skin, and sheets, and a comfortable bed.

On the floor beneath them lay their jackets, nestled next to each other and almost overlapping. 

And on the floor beneath that, a party raged; Liz was drunkenly singing neo-rock music, her loud, brassy tone filling up the entire mess hall as the crew drank and danced.

And beneath that, there was another ship with four hybrid girls sitting around a table and methodically cleaning their blasters. 

“He’s really growing roots, huh?” Fizzy asked into the companionable silence.

“Don’t jinx it,” Lottie warned. “He’s fragile; it could still break.” 

Daisy scoffed. “He’s not fragile, he’s _ Louis.” _

Lottie shook her head, but didn’t argue.

Fizzy lowered her blaster and looked at Lottie. “He’s better, now. He’s kept his promise, hasn’t he? And besides, it’s been years. We’re all better now.”

Lottie smiled at her. “Just think,” she purred, ears flicking deviously, “how much better we’ll be when we can add ‘overthrow a regime’ to our list of skills.”

Phoebe started laughing, and soon the rest of the girls joined in.

And maybe Fizzy was right about them all being better, because there wasn’t as much bitterness in their laughter as there might have been a month ago.

They had a cause to follow and two captains to lead them in the fight. 

They had a brother (a protector, and a sibling by more than blood), who seemed happier than he'd ever been.

Most of all, had a stolen battleship beneath their feet, and above their heads, and all around them.

And beyond that... 

Stars.

  


The end.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please feel free to yell at me in the comments (and by that I mean please dear god please yell at me in the comments). Check out the other amazing fics in this fest [ here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/1DHybridFicFest). Also, pls chuck a reblog on the fic post I've got on my tumblr. Much obliged!


End file.
